The Hardest of Hearts
by blood red youth
Summary: The story of Arra's trials. Unrequited Mika/Arra, Larten/Arra, FINALLY COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

the hardest of hearts

One of her arms gave a sickening crack; her right arm always had been a weak spot, and she often failed to guard it. Arra let out a cry of pain through gritted teeth, and though she attempted to keep on fighting, it was far easier with her distracted from the pain to take another shot at the juncture between her calf and knee. Her leg all but crumbled beneath her, and with that, her mentor stepped in.

"_That's enough!_" Mika bellowed, but he had been standing at the side of the ring all along wringing his hands and scowling, looking for all the world like a child who was afraid his favourite toy was about to be broken. Arra had laid her forehead against the ground, clinging onto consciousness, and though nobody could see it, she clenched her jaw at her former mentor's actions. "_How_ is this helping?"

Larten let out a long sigh, and took a couple of steps forward to hold a hand out to Arra. He despised the process of preparing her for her Trials, but she had selected him when given a choice. Vanez and Arrow had also been assisting her, but it was only Larten who either had the time to spend these extra days with her in preparation, and perhaps only Larten who she was certain would never be inclined to go easy on her.

Bending her sore neck upwards, she glanced at the hand offered, and then focused back to the floor. Pressing down with her good left hand, and making an attempt to stand on her non-injured right leg, she rose halfway and then a pang of pain in her left knee sent her crashing back down to the floor, humiliated surely, but not yet asking for help.

Frustrated that his question hadn't been answered, and unable to watch Arra struggle, Mika stepped into the ring and scooped her into his arms, ignoring a sharp cry of half-protest, half-outrage from his former assistant. Larten, a black eye forming steadily, his shoulder throbbing, and his lip split, found the energy to let out a sad chuckle.

"Let her do it herself, Mika," the red-haired vampire suggested; his voice soft but his tone hard. "She wanted to stand on her own; I offered her the help and she turned it down."

Mika's black eyes cared little for that advice. He resembled a hawk sometimes, with his sharp, harsh bone structure protruding through white skin, and his black obsidian eyes regarding almost everyone with the same mix of disdain and superior pity. Arra remained quiet, perhaps in too much pain for much else, or perhaps not entirely able to decide on where her loyalty lay. "You're hurting her," Mika growled crossly. "That isn't the same as training her, Crepsley. These extra sessions are detrimental."

"They were Arra's choice," Larten responded wearily, turning his back on the two to bandage up his bleeding fist. "She may stop whenever she likes. I will be here tomorrow at dawn as she and I agreed. She is welcome to decide that she no longer needs my help. Perhaps you should take over her instruction."

Mika's mouth was a thin line. What bothered him the most of all about this orange-haired upstart was that he had figured the whole situation out right from the start. Mika couldn't take over her instruction himself – not only did his upcoming investiture occupy a large proportion of his time, too much in fact for the black-haired Prince-to-be to watch Arra's training sessions as often as he would have liked, but also because he had never been able to fight with her properly. He couldn't bear to injure her in the same way as he couldn't bear to watch Larten injure her. In truth, nothing would have pleased him more than for her to bypass the Trials entirely – she had no immediate plans to become a General, and very few of the existing Generals would ever feel a female General a possibility, and so the necessity for her to undertake these life-threatening tests had nothing to do with her position in the clan and everything to do with her pride. The thought of all the pain she would have to suffer was unbearable for him, and he would do anything to protect her from it.

That was the nature of love, after all, wasn't it?

* * *

><p>Arra was back in the Sports Hall at next dawn, as expected. Her arm was in a sling but she was prepared to compensate for that. Larten had only been waiting five minutes for her, and it had never even entered his mind as a possibility that she wouldn't be there.<p>

"Mika is busy tonight," she said. She had the ever so slight touch of a limp, but she was recovering nicely. There was a purple bruise blossoming across her collarbone, obscured slightly by the collar of her shirt, but she seemed to have gotten away with relatively little bruising from what he could see. Her healing times were improving at the rates he'd hoped. "So he won't be watching us again, or interrupting." She sniffed, and shook off her jumper. "I am sorry about that," she continued, not meeting his eyes (she had always found apologies difficult). "I meant to speak up. You knew I would be back, anyway."

Larten nodded. He had never considered himself impossibly perceptive, but it hardly took a genius to figure out Arra's reasoning. Mika adored her – perhaps it was only Arra who was unable to see that this total adoration extended past the realms of the platonic – but his over-protective influence had wrecked her training more than once. Her Trials began in the coming weeks, and Vanez and Arrow had both taken heed of Mika's orders. He had even asked the Princes for special considerations on her behalf; they had been refused, of course, but even had they been granted Larten knew she would have turned them down. Vanex and Arrow stopped just where it got difficult, never tested her beyond her capabilities. Larten was the only one that she could be certain wouldn't let her training slip in succumbing to Mika's requests. Larten knew that Mika thought he loved her, in a protective, obsessive sense, but Arra would die in the upcoming Trials without someone who respected her enough to make sure she was properly prepared.

"Are you well enough to fight tonight?" he asked, watching as she stretched slowly. One of her legs was certainly weak. He couldn't help but feel an awful pang of regret for having hurt her. The way Mika looked at him, like some sort of sick, heartless sadist, had left a bitter taste in his mouth. Every night after they finished, when Mika was not inclined to interfere, Larten made sure to bandage her wounds and heal what he could of the damage he'd made, discuss her mistakes and successes in the fight, and take her to the medical wing if necessary. He would never admit to it, especially not when Mika prowled over them, but he was far more inclined to kiss her than to strike her. Equally, he had to admit that her progress – though not entirely his doing – filled him with an odd sort of pride. He didn't enjoy the process of hurting her as Mika thought he did, but he enjoyed occasionally being the victim of a surprise defeat from her, these becoming more and more common.

"Hmm, perhaps not for as long as usual," Arra said honestly. "My arm isn't healing up yet, and my knee still feels twisted. But I'd like to try. I won't have a night's break between Trials. I'll have to get used to overcoming these kinds of problems."

Larten nodded again, and stepped back up to the ring like they had the day before. "The fact that your arm is in a sling," he said as she stepped up to stand opposite him. "Is actually a good thing. Your right arm is always your weakest spot. Having it out of use completely will teach you how to get by without it should you ever need to. Your leg is an inconvenience, but I'm sure –"

"Lartennnn," Arra hissed, but when he looked back at her she was smiling cheekily, her mirror-like eyes glinting. "I know you're the one training me, carrot-top, but I think you have a lot to learn from me about _when to shut up_."

Unable to stop himself from grinning, Larten clapped his hands together as a makeshift start signal, and let their fight begin.

* * *

><p>"Are you nervous?" Gavner asked Arra, who was swaying from one foot to another absently. He was much younger than any of them, one of Paris' assistants, but his cheery attitude and occasional brilliant idea had made him a few valuable older friends, including Larten and Vanez. She honoured his question with a sarcastic little chuckle.<p>

"It's foolish not to be nervous, isn't it?" she said, but bit her lip anyway. "I suppose I am not too scared of the worst, but –"

"She has nothing to be nervous about!" Mika interrupted confidently, reaching out a hand to brush a stray strand of her black hair behind her ear. Larten watched in amusement. In anyone else perhaps it would have been a gesture of affection, but Mika made it feel like something entirely less pleasant. He fixed her appearance in the same controlling way he tackled everything else; rather than to keep her hair away from her eyes to help her focus, he felt she looked scruffy. The irony in his comment, too, was not lost on the rest of the group. Mika, such a noble and upstanding vampire himself, had no concept of how doomed she would be had she trained only to his requirements. Arrow and Vanez too, looked more at the floor than at Arra, perhaps knowing the ways in which they had already disadvantaged her. Gavner, too, despite his fondness for Arra, didn't seem entirely sure a girl would be able to face these Trials that had already killed two since his arrival at the mountain a decade ago.

"Mika is right," Larten said from his seat, breaking the growing tension in a room full of people uncertain as to whether Arra was capable or not. Arra glanced over her shoulder to smile briefly at him. "Arra has absolutely nothing to worry about."

A guard stepped out and beckoned the group into the Hall of Princes. Arra hesitated slightly, the others heading into the Hall ahead of her, but Larten, having expected it, held back himself to offer his hand to her. Smiling shakily, Arra allowed herself to take it.

"Larten," Arra said quickly. "If I don't make it, I just wanted to say thank you for your help. It hasn't been altogether easy training me, with one thing and another, but you've been up every day helping me, and if I get through any of this, it'll be purely due to the fact that you and really _only_ you –"

"Sails," Larten interrupted, though he squeezed her hand a little tighter and offered her a reassuring smile. "Take a lesson from yourself and learn when to _shut up_."

With those words of obscure reassurance, Arra's Trials began.


	2. Chapter 2

the hardest of hearts II

* * *

><p>Arrow, the best-respected of any of the vampires investing their time in her training, went up to the platform alongside her. The two hadn't exactly bonded over Arra's preparation – there was no animosity between them, but Arrow wasn't much of a teacher. He and Mika were thick as thieves, a feat for two who were often such cold, distant men, but this had hardly helped. Arrow, from the moment he had laid eyes on Mika's new assistant, had treated her like any ordinary Victorian woman, and had always seemed surprised ever since to see her in anything but a petticoat. His forever patronizing tone of voice had grated on her; she would probably never measure up to Arrow's impressive physical standards (one of Arrow's arms was thicker than both of her legs as the situation stood), but it was all too clear that Arrow had no hope of her reaching any acceptable standard at all. He stood beside her on the platform and offered her his arm in an oddly out of place gesture of chivalry. When she took it reluctantly, he smiled down at her sadly.<p>

"Whatever happens," he said, as the guards asked if anyone wished to examine the stones. "You have done ever so well. You can be proud of yourself."

It was like a final knife in the back. Arra knew that no self-respecting vampire would be proud to fail in a first Trial, or proud to fail the Trials at all. Larten had taken his a decade before she arrived, and he'd told her how close-run they'd been, but had honestly admitted that had he failed, he would have accepted a walk to the Hall of Death knowing that the life of a vampire was one he was not suited for. Nobody else had admitted anything of the sort to her. The clear difference of course was that Larten believed in her ability to pass the Trials, and didn't think she'd be facing that walk of shame, whereas the same couldn't be said for the others.

"Thank you for your help," Arra responded coldly, tone clipped, eyes forward as the green-garbed guard approached her. She tried not to feel around in the bag too much; fate was fate, and the luck of the Vampire Gods would guide her, if they so wished. She closed her fingers around the first stone her hand touched, and handed it back to the guard.

"Number seventeen," the guard announced to the rest of the Hall; it was surprisingly full, perhaps teaming with vampires eager to witness the first female attempt at the Trials for centuries, or perhaps just eager to watch her fail. "The Lost Trail."

It came as a wave of relief, but Arra checked herself before she allowed a smile to form under the Princes scrutiny. Of all of the Trials, the ones she feared the most were the head-to-head battles. She had prepared extensively, and mainly with Larten, for The Dual – a straight fight, no weapons, between the person taking the Trials and a selected General, both of which almost impossible tasks for her. She could imagine the selected General being Arrow, a man easily three times her size, or one of the sharply trained hunters like Vanez. She wouldn't stand a chance, and the worst thing perhaps of all was that the fight was not until the death. She would have no chance of dying during the Trial, as she would have wished, but rather would certainly face being impaled by stakes in front of all those who had not believed in her and had been proven right. It was an almost unbearable thought.

The Lost Trail was one of the simpler options, at least, for her skills. It was a Trial based on speed, strategy and focus. Given a time limit, her task was to locate and return an oval stone placed at the top of the Mountain with an X carved into the back – she needed to avoid the variety of dangerous animals on her trek, particularly bears, who often drank vampire blood from the supplies at the Mountain and turned mad, and the Mountain leopard, which, like many cats, had an infamous dislike of vampires. The range north of the Mountain's entrance was rarely explored, and with good reason – the Mountain became steeper and more treacherous at those higher altitudes, Tackling a bear or an angry leopard were tasks enough on the flatter ground, let alone while trying to avoid a fatal fall.

However, the beauty of the Trial was that there were no certainties. Arra knew she was more than capable of climbing the Mountain and retrieving the stone in far less time than she had been allocated – it was one of the few Trials where being smaller and lighter than her male counterparts might come in useful. If she were to avoid any unpleasant surprises in the form of poisonous snakes, wild bears and vicious leopards, the task could very well be one of the simplest.

* * *

><p>Such optimism, Arra realized halfway through her ascent, had been misplaced.<p>

She had failed to factor in the weather, or perhaps she had just been unfortunate in the harshness of the weather that night. The blizzard left her hands numb and her skin raw, and made climbing the Mountain walls far more of a difficult task – the ground was harder in the freezing temperatures and every breath of the icy air left her throat feeling cut. Her eyes felt heavy and dry, and she blinked at twice her normal speed to try to shake the snow off her eyelashes and certainly to stop them from freezing together. The wind was almost an opponent in itself, knocking her sideways if she wasn't entirely prepared for its stronger gusts, whistling in her ears and distracting her. The knife she had been equipped with was simply not enough; the ground was too tough for such a short blade, and were she to run into any dangerous beast at this rate, she would have to be so close to them to use the knife that she would stand no chance. Arra was forced to search for ways around the climb, covering twice the distance with very little time for such delay, and the running in the painful temperatures left her joints feeling ready to shatter.

Somewhere along the line, she had acquired a loyal following of wolves. She was grateful for that, in that when she was unable to climb the Mountain in the way she had expected, the wolves seemed to assist her, and take her on a route far more accessible, trotting alongside her. Equally, like her mentor, Arra had always had a vague mistrust of wolves and their sheep's clothing. Though they served to guide her and help her, Arra never took her eyes off the route herself, expecting them to lead her wrong at any given turn. She could almost hear Larten's voice in her head, telling her that wolves were nothing if not loyal, but they were only animals, as vicious as those she was avoiding if provoked, and Arra never had been one to trust easily where trust was not earned.

The younger of the wolves gave a yelp, and her head snapped around to see the source of its worry. The two other, darker pelted wolves at her side darted away from her immediately to the assistance of their kin – confirming Arra's suspicions about the fickle loyalties of beasts nicely – but she froze instantly when she saw their target. Dark purple skinned, struggling wildly against the wolves, two Vampaneze stood out unmistakably in the white landscape.

Arra froze. Suddenly without the wolves at her side she felt incredibly exposed. Vampaneze rarely travelled around Vampire Mountain for anything other than sport, and dangerous sport at that – if they were caught by the superior numbers of vampires they faced certain death. These two, travelling so far above the entrance to the Mountain, were clearly not searching for the clan, but rather they were Vampire Hunting, chasing the young and foolish who had dared climb so high away from their kin. She was suddenly the prey, separated from her pack, and they were the predators, and as she met the red eyes of one, she faced an impossible decision.

She could head back to the Mountain – the Vampaneze would be caught if she made it there, and killed for trespassing on the vampire's land, but then, even if she lived past that point, her time would certainly be up and she would have failed the Trial anyway. She could continue further north, towards the top, but they would surely catch her on the way down.

Of course, it was no choice at all. She was no coward. She would face the Vampaneze with her short knife, and she would retrieve the stone, and if she died in the process, she would be proud to have fought until her last breath. She could almost hear Mika in the wind, begging her to come back to the Mountain, but where was the pride in that?

With that, leaving the Vampaneze to continue to dispatch the wolves, Arra set off at an even faster pace. The surge in adrenaline, even more than before, warmed her limbs a little and pushed her on a little further. She couldn't help but wonder whether those two were alone. Suddenly an angry boar or a crazed bear seemed less and less terrifying in comparison with a seasoned Vampaneze. Every crunch of leaves under her feet terrified her, and every unexplained noise increased her pulse twofold as she neared the summit. Everything seemed remarkably simple now in comparison with the fact that her death had become almost a certainty. As she reached the top of the Mountain, hands bloody from digging into the rough ice, one wrist aching from a near-miss fall a little lower down and beginning to swell unpleasantly, Arra realized she had lost track of time entirely in her panic. She had no idea how long she had left, but losing track of the time was a rookie mistake. She remembered Vanez's words on the subject, _time is life_, and that hardly helped. The idea of escaping the Vampaneze and returning to the Mountain to be ten minutes out of time seemed horrendously ironic.

As she turned around, though, slipping the oval stone inside a muslin bag she carried with her knife at her waist, it became abundantly clear that escaping the Vampaneze needn't have been a worry for her. They were the same two, which led her to believe that perhaps there were only two of them here, but this hardly helped her. One looked bloodied and exhausted, perhaps fresh from a battle with the wolves that the Vampaneze had no doubt won, but the other looked unscathed. They were both dark purple, and in this climate perhaps they had been forced to drink the blood of a snake or a wildcat and gone mad. It seemed that way at least, the way they snarled and bared their teeth at the young vampire, spit drooling in long slathers from their chops. They said nothing, but one of them let out a low, animalistic growl, and pounced forward, dagger drawn.

Panicked, Arra dodged the first attack, but the Vampaneze had only been playing, and darted off to her left with a hyena-like chuckle. The other Vampaneze, the one who had not made to attack her, seemed too tired to do much, but held a long sword out in front of him as though this itself would be enough protection, grinning wolfishly.

They were playing with their prey before they killed it. Even these wild, mad curs had failed to take her seriously as an opponent. The sudden indignity of the way they_ laughed_ at her, the way they thought they could _taunt _her because she was helpless, lit her temper suddenly. Arra had never had much control of her temper, even when it would have done her good to keep her calm, and as the Vampaneze darted at her again, she swiped wildly with her knife, her aim poor in her rage, but slicing his upper arm so that it spurted blood out onto the snow in a satisfying manner.

The Vampaneze laughed again. These two really were mad, the incision seemed not even to have hurt the wild Vampaneze in the way she knew it would have hurt anyone with a reasonable presence of mind; she had sliced straight through the muscle and yet he carried on incessantly laughing and feinting forwards as though to attack her. In the way he grinned at her she could almost see herself human again, and the deep purple hue of the Vampaneze's skin almost turned the unhealthy white of her father's, gaunt and dulled from alcoholism and madness, wheezing at her and delivering her a cracking backhand, _you're exactly like your mother_, her slim girl's human wrists in one large brute's hand, the taunting laughter sounding _exactly the same_.

When the mist cleared, there was blood splattered over her white shirt, thick and dark and almost clotted, all the way up one arm. The Vampaneze's throat was slit. Her own potentiality for that kind of evil suddenly terrified her – had that been her, just then, had she just killed him? Her own blood ran cold to see the Vampaneze still shaking and convulsing on the ground, blood tainting the snow where he lay. The other Vampaneze let out an inhuman hiss, and shrunk back away from her, the fear in his eyes she had always wanted to inspire, but did not relish now that she saw it. _Are you a fighter or aren't you?_ Vanez asked her in her mind, and then suddenly her own personal feelings about it became insignificant. These two were the enemy. Her aim was to destroy them; what kind of General would she make if she couldn't even dispatch a mad Vampaneze, let alone the mad vampires she might one day be sent to remove?

Before the other Vampaneze could escape, she quickly darted forwards, before he could expect it, slicing his arm at the elbow. Nerve cut, he dropped his sword with a cry of agony, cut short by the gurgling blood when she slit his throat like she had with his brother.

* * *

><p>The wait at the Mountain's entrance was painful.<p>

Arrow had been the first to let out a sigh at the state of the weather, presuming it could only get windier and colder with altitude. Mika had stood at the very front, shifting from foot to foot, arms folded. Whenever anyone except Arrow had spoken to him, he had waved them off, not caring if it had come across as rude. Even in his own Trials, he did not recall ever being so nervous. Vanez and Gavner had been chatty, trying perhaps to lighten the mood, but hadn't mentioned Arra's Trial once, perhaps not wishing to joke about the weather when it might have been the death of their friend. Larten had been the quietest of all, but had sat behind the others, redressing the wounds on his hands that fighting with her for the last few months had left him with and applying salve to his bruises. As the time ticked by, nearing the two hour limit, Mika, arms still folded, began pacing back and forth behind the guarded entrance.

"Could you try to look like you care a _little_ more, Crepsley?" The black-haired man commented, his voice almost cracking with his nerves. "Have the decency to pretend to mind whether she lives or dies for the rest of us perhaps?"

Before Larten could respond, Arrow laid a hand on Mika's back as a comfort, and led him to stand at the left of the entrance to keep watch for his former assistant, shooting an apologetic look at the orange-haired vampire. Watching this exchange, Gavner crouched to sit with his friend.

"How are you feeling?" the young vampire asked.

"Fine," Crepsley replied evenly, scratching the back of his head. He drummed the fingers of his right hand on the ground. "It has been a long wait. She only has ten minutes left; I am surprised she has chosen to cut it this close with the time."

Gavner coughed awkwardly. "Perhaps she's lost track of the time?" he said softly, and his friend's green eyes flicked up to look at him crossly. Gavner kept his eyes to the floor after that/ "I'm just saying. The weather conditions were unexpected. It's probably made the climb a lot tougher. Just don't be too crushed if she –"

"She'll be here," Larten told him calmly. "And she wouldn't appreciate that attitude, either."

Gavner swallowed. "I am just nervous about her," he said. "I know she can do it, but everyone can make mistakes."

"She has not made any mistakes." Larten responded, and stood. "There is no need to be nervous about her, either. Start believing in her, and perhaps you will not feel so worried." He made a gesture at Mika, who was rubbing his chin in anxiety. "He does not think she can do it," Larten continued, and then smiled. "And that is why he is so worried. It is more Mika's own insecurity than his knowledge of her own capabilities that keeps him in such perpetual torment over her wellbeing."

Gavner took a moment to dissect his friends complex choice of vocabulary, but before he could get to the bottom of what he might have meant, Mika let out a roar of half-delight, half-surprise. When everyone else on the ledge looked up, five minutes left to spare, a shivering Arra, covered in blood, snow and dirt, was planting two purple and crimson heads at the feet of the guard, much to the shock of everyone around her.

"There are Vampaneze above the Mountain," she said calmly, and then reached into the bag at her waist to present the Prince forseeing her Trial – in this case, it was Paris Skyle, who was stood behind the guard – the carved stone she had been sent to retrieve. "I only saw those two, so perhaps they were alone."

The stunned silence lasted a few seconds longer until Mika finally spoke. "Did you kill them?" he asked in bewilderment, his voice oddly soft, his expression unusually confused.

"No, their heads spontaneously flew off in front of me," Arra responded sarcastically, leaning against the wall of the cave, obviously completely exhausted. "They were mad and I am not a General. Besides, they were hunting. I didn't have a lot of choice."

Larten smiled from behind the assembled group of her supporters. The way she justified it was so obviously lost on the others, except perhaps Paris, who as usual remained silent and wise. Mika hadn't asked whether she had been the one to dispatch the Vampaneze out of disgust for the killings, but merely because it had never even entered his mind that she would be capable of it. Larten had to admit, if only to himself, completing the task and killing two Vampaneze on the way exceeded even his expectations. Rather than read into it that he didn't believe her capable, her own guilt made her sensitive to the question over the morality of what she had done. It was a typical misunderstanding between the two. Mika had none of Arra's concept of morality over Vampaneze; his hatred for them was famous, he considered them vermin rather than opponents. Though she had been his assistant for many years, and though she had a capacity to be incredibly cold, it was all too clear that Mika's black and white moral stance had never rubbed off on her.

"Congratulations, Miss Sails," Paris Skyle said eventually. "You have successfully completed your first Trial of Initiation. Not only that, but you have alerted us to a danger we were not aware of above our very heads. Be assured, we will send a group to search for any other rogue Vampaneze tomorrow night." He smiled at her, and extended a hand for her to shake.

* * *

><p>"There isn't a single General I can tackle," Arra commented, as her usual dawn training session with Larten commenced. "Think about it. I could end up with Mika or Arrow!"<p>

"No, you could not," Larten corrected kindly, helping her to bandage her cut hands from the ice. "They exclude anyone who has helped to train you because they can't be sure that they would fight you fairly."

Arra rolled her eyes, she knew the rules. "I could get someone _like_ Mika or Arrow," she said softly. "They're unlikely to pick someone relatively new; they're far more likely to pick someone of good standing to pit me against. No offence, but I can't even beat _you_."

Larten grinned. "I defeated Mika a few times, you know, I am no weakling," he said, and stepped back with his hands out to begin their fight. "There are a lot of other Trials, Arra. You are statistically unlikely to pick the only one you know you would have major difficulty with."

"If I pick it," she said, stepping up with him into the ring. "I'll die. There is no question over that. I can't fight one-on-one. I'm not even convinced I'll ever learn."

Larten put his hands down and regarded her. "You fought those two Vampaneze today, didn't you?" He asked her. "That was two on one. You always tell me that you cannot fight one-on-one, but the one time it has come up in a real, life or death situation you have won, even against the odds."

"That wasn't the same," Arra said, rubbing her temples. She had hoped the Vampaneze wouldn't be mentioned. "It wasn't really a straight fight. They weren't even really trying to fight with me; they were mad, and they were just baiting me. It was nothing like it would be in the Trial."

Larten shrugged. "Either way," he said. "You have proved that you are not incapable of fighting when you are backed into a corner. That is the most important thing."

She was silent for a moment. Though Larten put his hands back up, ready to begin the fight, Arra folded her arms, and pursed her lips nervously. "I –" she started, and then cleared her throat. "I don't think it was…entirely the right thing to do?"

Larten watched her curiously. "You sounded so guilty when you came back," he remarked. "When you were trying to justify it to Mika."

Arra looked down. "They weren't fighting with me properly," she said. "They didn't consider me a proper opponent. They were just baiting me. It wasn't really a fair fight, was it, if they weren't expecting me to fight back?"

Larten smiled. "It is their own fault if they weren't expecting you to fight back," he reminded her. "Only ever turn your back on a corpse, remember? They should have known you would not be helpless." She said nothing, staring back at him like she expected more. He sighed. "I do not enjoy killing. I think it is a little bit worrying to find someone who does, and they are becoming all too common. But the Vampaneze were mad, and they were not going to allow you to escape. You made the right decision."

"I lost control, though," Arra said, and by this time she had lost interest in the fighting entirely. She sat down, her mouth set in a grim line, her eyes worried. "I've never done that in a fight. I don't remember killing them, I just remember them being dead. That can't be right? They were mad, not evil."

Sighing, Larten sat down beside her. It was an effort not to lay a hand on her knee or put an arm around her shoulders, but she never had taken people being too forward overly well. He remembered watching her nearly decapitate a particularly handsy vampire in the Sports Hall once, and it would be incredibly inappropriate and inconvenient for that to happen to them. She looked oddly lovely, though, somehow, but then Larten supposed there wasn't a time he hadn't thought she looked lovely in one way or another. "Do not think about it now," he said. "You have other Trials to concentrate for. And if it is of any comfort to you," he said, and then, taking a risk, lay a large hand over hers, a gesture of his sincerity. She flinched, a little, but then looked up at him, eyes wide and innocently confused. "I think you did the right thing." He blushed after that, and he cursed himself for his own ridiculously pale complexion. "Ah, I know that my opinion is probably of very little consequence to you. But I think that I would have done the same, confronted with your situation today. Do not think too deeply on the morals of it; nobody will judge your actions, especially –"

"Larten," she said quietly, his opinion of surprisingly monumental importance to her, the corner of her lips twitching up into a playful smile, her fingers twining into his between them. "Honestly, _shut up._"

He chuckled, and, running his thumb over the bandage on the back of her hand, reached up to touch the loose strands of her hair that had escaped the ponytail, curled about the back of her neck, and then let his hand slip across to her neck, laying a few fingers across her collarbones and dragging them up, across her windpipe, jugular, along her jaw and then across her soft bottom lip, failing to find the words to tell her how lovely she was, touching the corner of her lips and then resting his hand on her pale cheek –

"Not practicing?"

Arra jumped, her hand twitching out from under Larten's, her eyes fluttering downwards instantly. Larten had never hated Mika quite as much as he did at that _precise _moment. Arra sprung to her feet, stretching the muscles of her arms nonchalantly. "I am too tired for a fight," she told the dark-haired General, who hadn't moved from the door. She felt oddly guilty, or perhaps it was just embarrassment, or something – for some reason, there was something in Mika's expression and the way he stood entirely still like a statue that made her feel as though she had in some way upset him. "I think I ought to rest. Unless there is something you think I need to do to prepare before my next Trial, Larten?"

Larten hadn't moved. "Ah, make sure you do not lose track of your timing," he said, running a hand through his hair. "And do not panic if one of the Trials you do not favour happens to come up. You are capable of passing anything, you should believe more in yourself."

Another uncomfortable silence followed that, and Arra rubbed her hands together and nodded. "Thank you," she said to nobody in particular, and then strode past Mika and off towards her cell without another word to either of them.

Larten stood, the silence in the empty Hall between the two men unbearable, but when he turned Mika had disappeared, perhaps off to nurse his injured pride. He and Arra, in that sense, were probably more alike than either of them realized.

* * *

><p>if you've managed to get to the end of such a mammoth chapter, congratulations! i considered splitting it up, but really i'd like to do a chapter a trial. anyway, i'm having lots of trouble thinking of enough trials for arra to undertake and the names of them. i have one more planned, but other than that my imagination has utterly failed me. if any of you have any ideas i'd love to hear them - either in private message or in a review - i'd hate to get stuck after the next chapter! thanks so much for all reviews so far as well. :) bry<p> 


	3. Chapter 3

**the hardest of hearts III**

Arra rose relatively early, the Trial not until midnight, and after an unpleasant shower (the waterfalls were still incredibly harsh, even after the years she had spent in the Mountain), she took a few spare towels to wrap around her shoulders while sitting outside to watch the end of the sunset, just late enough that the remaining light wouldn't burn her, but early enough that she could still see a little bit of the Sun. It was perhaps the only thing she missed about being human – and while she had been human, she had spent much of her life living in Russia, one of the coldest climates of all, and so the Sun had been a special and foreign thing to her even then. Perhaps that was what had made it all the more special.

She was only outside for a few minutes, and she had largely missed the setting of the Sun in any case, before crunching footsteps behind her caught her attention. Always alert, she spun around, hands raised and ready to attack, she was relieved to see that it was only Mika approaching her.

"You could have spoken up sooner," she said, turning back to face the dying of the light. It was beautiful, but it didn't quite measure up to the beauty of the dawn. She would never be able to see dawn again, though, and she'd long ago come to accept that. "I thought someone was trying to attack me."

"You always think someone is trying to get at you," Mika said softly. One of Arra's most prominent characteristics had always been her inability to understand the concept of trust. Even Mika had no idea where that might have originated, despite having known her for so many years. She had always taken badly to being asked too many personal questions. She was incredibly, frustratingly complex, but not in that infuriating way that other women were. She was too strong to ask for any special considerations and too proud to be pitied because of her past. Something had certainly happened to her, somewhere along the line, that had made it impossible to get close to her, even as her mentor.

Arra shrugged. "It's typical that the weather is nice tonight," she said. "I bet tonight I'll have an indoor Trial."

Mika nodded, and sat down beside her. There was a brief silence. He barely ever saw her lately, now that he was occupied with becoming a Prince and she was occupied with her training. It hadn't occurred to him before he began to lose her that he wasn't ready to let go of her. Mika could see himself becoming overly-protective (he always had been), and he even irritated himself sometimes with the way he was always breathing down her neck. He cared too much about her, but it was almost impossible to stop. The extent of his own feelings for her had not even been apparent to Mika himself until the night before, watching her with Larten in the Sports Hall. Is that how they had been behaving every night that he couldn't find the time to watch them? Of course, Larten's behaviour hadn't surprised him – Mika had seen this coming long ago, why else would he have helped her so unselfishly? – but what had surprised him was Arra's own lack of resistance. She was so difficult, and any time he had ever made any effort to touch her she had shrunk away from him, assuming the worst. What had Larten done differently? What surprised him most, though, was how intensely it had bothered him.

Arra spoke first. "I'm sorry if it was awkward last night," she said quietly, gathering herself up to go inside. "I hadn't expected you to join us. Let's just forget about it, anyway."

Mika shook his head, and gestured for her to sit back down. "You have hours before your Trial," he said, when she looked in a rush to leave. "You can spare another ten minutes to talk with me. I have barely seen you on your own for weeks."

She shifted as though he was placing the blame on her. "Well, I haven't been doing much but training, and when I've been free you've been in countless meetings. I haven't been –"

Mika held up a hand to stop her. "It isn't your fault," he told her. "I just never got much of a chance to wish you luck for your Trials. I'm sorry I couldn't have been more involved in your training."

"You found Arrow and Vanez for me to compensate," she said, shrugging. "It isn't a problem."

Mika took a deep breath. "You could have asked Arrow for those extra sessions, you know," he told her. "Larten is nowhere near as experienced. I remember his Trials, there was nothing remarkable about his success – certainly you would have learnt more from Arrow, he has taken the Trials twice as it is, and is the only vampire I've ever heard of to escape unscathed from The Blooded Boars. There is very little Arrow doesn't know. And Vanez has trained countless young vampires for their Trials of Initiation; his success rate with those he trained is impeccable."

Arra couldn't help but roll her eyes. "Yes, I know," she said. "They were the best two to choose to help me, Mika. I'm grateful that you put so much thought into my training." She was silent for a second, and then she turned back to face him. "It isn't that I haven't learnt a lot from Arrow and Vanez," she said delicately. "It's that I couldn't help but feel…that they weren't training me in the way they would have trained others."

Mika frowned. "Well, I'm sure they have tailored their approach towards you specifically," he admitted. "But I'm certain they only would have made such a choice to help you."

Arra stared back at her former mentor, brow furrowed. "I don't agree with you," she said bluntly. There was a time and place to dodge the issue at hand, and she only had a few hours now before she might face her death. "I think that, intentionally or not, you've influenced the way they trained me. Arrow still _bows_ when he sees me. Do you expect me to believe that he bows to all the rest of the new vampires? Will he bow to Gavner if he trains him for his Trials?"

Mika shifted uncomfortably. "Perhaps," he began awkwardly. "Mine and Arrow's close friendship has subconsciously influenced the way he treats you. You know I've never been much good at fighting with you. I didn't mean for the way I consider you to affect your training, of course, but I suppose Arrow couldn't have helped but pick up on –"

"No," said Arra, impatient already. Mika could talk his way out of anything, she knew that, but she wasn't interested in his long strings of half-truths right now. She had four hours to live and she wasn't going to waste them not being able to get her point across. "Mika, you told Arrow and Vanez how you expected them to treat me."

Mika's brow furrowed. "Arra, I feel you have gotten the wrong end of the stick. Perhaps Larten has misled you a little. My intention –"

His subtle dig at Larten made her blood truly boil. Perhaps it was that Larten had been her greatest help, the only one who seemed really ready to do something about whether she lived or died, or perhaps it was just that she couldn't stand to hear him bad-mouthed anymore. "_No_," she said again, more firmly, and turned to her old mentor with angry eyes. "I heard you discuss it months ago. I heard the way you hinted that I'd _never undergone this type of training _and that _appropriate allowances should be made_. It was almost a threat the way you explained it to them. You think I didn't know that?"

He'd been caught in a lie – or at least, an omission of the truth – and he knew it. Mika's mouth formed a thin, hard line and his jaw clenched. He looked even harsher than usual like that, but she would never be afraid of Mika the way other vampires her age were. He took too long to respond, and she could see his black eyes dart to and fro as if searching for a reason in the creased folds of his cloak, but she was tired of wasting time.

"So therefore," she said, her voice calm, cold; she had learnt all of this from him. "If it's reasonable to conclude that anyone has misled me, I would have to say that it's been _you_, not Larten. And that's why I went elsewhere for my training. I didn't ask for your opinion on the matter, and I don't appreciate the way you _watch_ us like I can't look after myself, and I don't appreciate being made to feel like I've made the wrong decision when if anything, all I've done is ever so slightly improve my chances of survival."

She took a deep shuddering breath after the outburst. It felt like a weight off her shoulders, and she was compelled to say more, her fiery temper pushing her forward into a tirade of fury, but that would get her nowhere. Reason with Mika was everything, and it wouldn't do to lose her moral high ground over a childish fit of anger towards him.

"If you've got nothing to say to me, I haven't got time to be sitting here," she said sharply. "Aren't you even going to pretend to be sorry?"

The silence continued, and so she stood, angrier than ever, and turned back towards the entrance to the Mountain. Conflicted but overwhelmed by his desire not to lose her, Mika clasped her arm before she could get too far away from him.

"What is it?" she cried, cheeks flushed with the effort of keeping a shred of her control. "If you've something to say then _come on and say it_."

Mika kept his eyes on his large hand around her small forearm, such a giveaway of her fragility, her femininity, however much she despised it. He was utterly unable to meet her eyes knowing that she had caught him out and that he had let her down so severely. Arra was not the forgiving type.

"Were you going to kiss him yesterday Arra?"

As soon as the words had left his mouth he regretted them. It was unnecessary but there was nothing he wanted to know more. It had kept him awake all day, the thought of them, whether she had feelings for this younger vampire who couldn't possibly care for her as much as he did. Arra was perfectly still, unpleasantly so.

"Of what possible interest is that to you?" she asked quietly.

"It's been bothering me."

The silence continued. He eventually worked his eyes along her arm and towards her eyes, only to receive a narrowed, chilly glare. "And what if I tell you yes?" she said, shrugging her shoulders and raising her eyebrows. "What if I say I was going to before you appeared?"

Mika's mouth dropped open. He was so _angry_ with her suddenly that he released her arm and flung it away from him as though in itself it offended him. He laughed humourlessly, scowling at her. "How can you even _consider_ it?" he asked her. "Larten Crepsley, of all the men in the world? He doesn't _really_ know you, Arra, and I'll tell you now he doesn't _really _care about you, whatever you might think. I never took you for the kind of girl that would be naïve enough to be charmed by his particular brand of arrogance."

He met her eyes again to find them wider than before, hurt rather than angry. She stared back at him in shock for a second and then, like someone who has been hurt too many times to ponder it too long, she looked down and put her hands in her pockets. "I wouldn't have kissed him last night," she said, and strolled back towards the Mountain. "But thanks so much for the advice."

Though she heard that Larten was looking for her, Arra purposefully spent the last few hours before her second trial alone. She was surprised Mika could bear to see her face her death without fixing things between them, and she waited those final hours in his cell as a test of his courage that he failed.

* * *

><p>Larten caught her waiting outside the Hall of Princes at exactly midnight.<p>

"Where have you been?" he asked, cheeks flushed and eyes wide. It was clear that he had driven himself almost to the point of madness trying to find her, and she felt sorry for avoiding him and leaving him to worry about her. He took a deep breath to steady himself, realizing his own embarrassing loss of composure before she could point it out to him. "People were saying you might have run away and I knew you would never have even considered it, but then I could not find you to prove them all wrong which was incredibly frustrating. Then I started to worry that something awful had happened to you and that was why nobody knew where you were. I even went outside to see if you were watching the sunset again –"

"Larten, not to be rude -"

"—but shut up. I know. I am sorry." Larten ran an embarrassed hand over the back of his neck. It was clear that he had only worried to such an extent because the events of the night before had worried him themselves. He had known probably before she had that Mika would be angry with her, that she was still questioning herself over her moral decisions in her first Trial, and that she more than likely regretted her almost-actions the night before. He felt such a child to worry so much about something that hadn't even really happened, but he had thought for hours about whether it had changed her opinion of him. "Are you feeling alright? Prepared?"

"No less prepared than yesterday," she answered evasively. Then she met his eyes and sighed. "I argued with Mika. It wasn't especially traumatic. But I am surprised that he would leave things unsaid between us when he knows he'll probably never have the chance to tell me after tonight."

"You must not think that," Larten chided her gently, and then lay a hand on her shoulder. Asking what they had quarrelled over seemed pointless – he was almost certain he already knew – and even besides that, he had always found it hard to tell with Arra when he was pushing his luck. "And it is pointless to be thinking about this now. In another few days, when your Trials are complete, you can discuss your feelings with Mika."

Arra rolled her eyes, but she couldn't help but let the corner of her mouth twitch up into a smile. "That's if I manage to complete my Trials at all," she said, and absently stretched in preparation for her upcoming test. She bit her bottom lip nervously, but said nothing else on the matter, though for a second it sounded like she had been planning to. She had all too obviously been sitting up all day thinking about this and other things, and he supposed when she had begun to find thinking about the two Vampaneze she had dispatched unbearable, she had moved on to thinking about her own insecurities about her Trials. Arra had never, in his experience, been one for any unnecessary emotional outbursts, and in exactly the way he would have expected for her, she fixed her eyes straight ahead, unwilling to allow herself to show how much the events of the last two days were bothering her.

Larten sighed. "Focus," he said softly. "Stop worrying about Mika and what happened last night with the Vampaneze. None of it is as important as your survival tonight."

Arra rubbed her eyes wearily. "This is only the second night," she said miserably. "My hands are cut to shreds and I'm exhausted. I should have known better than to think I could really do it."

Before he could reassure her, or attempt it, or perhaps just tell her the extent to which he believed in her, or the extent to which he cared for her, the guard at the door called them in to the Hall, and she took a deep breath and faced him again, eyes turned down.

"Ah," she began awkwardly. "Larten, before I go –"

"Are you going to say something sentimental before _every_ Trial?" Larten forced himself to say, though he had never seen anything quite as charming as that brief moment of vulnerability and it almost killed him to cut it short. He smiled cheekily at her as if everything was exactly as it had been before. It was integral, he told himself, to give her a little last bit of confidence before she faced this test, and the only way he could think to do it was the behave as normal. "You know, if you do it every night, it is not going to have much meaning left eventually. Whatever it is, I'm sure you can wait to tell me in a few days."

She smiled, thankfully – he would have hated for his last comments to have been another knife in the back – and evidently decided that whatever she had been meaning to say to him would have to wait or remain unsaid. Sighing overdramatically, she rolled her eyes. "_Fine_ then," she said in a mockery of genuine annoyance. "I'll keep all the nice things I was going to say to myself if you're so ungrateful." With that, she winked and strode away to find Arrow, hoping for all the world that those hadn't been her parting words.

* * *

><p>"Trial number six," Vancha March said to the rest of the Hall as he rolled the stone between his fingers. He was the newest Prince, still relatively young, and out of any of them he seemed to be the one most inclined to give her the greatest benefit of the doubt. "The Maze of Blades."<p>

It wasn't the worst news, but Arra hardly could have considered it the best. The other vampires in the Hall let out an uneasy sort of murmur, which hardly served to reassure her. She hadn't struggled particularly in training for the Maze, but then again she hadn't been in front of a crowd of vampires, half probably hoping for bloodshed as entertainment rather than for her survival, on her previous attempts. Years ago, she remembered that she would have boasted that her reflexes were impeccable, but now, faced with a Trial entirely based upon her ability to react at high speed, she found herself regretting such arrogance.

Mika, across the Hall, had kept his eyes not on his former assistant but on Larten Crepsley as the Trial had been called. He hadn't even flinched, hadn't even blinked, at the announcement, and Mika could have sworn he caught sight of the shadow of a smirk on his face even from across the Hall. Larten's blind confidence was half-reassuring to the hawk-like General, and half made his temper flare inside his chest again. How could it be that Crepsley cared for her when he didn't even have the decency to be worried? Mika remembered years ago when Larten had pulled the Maze of Blades in his own set of Trials. He was clever and agile – strength, luckily for Arra, was of absolutely no consequence in this Trial – but even he had been badly wounded. He had been fortunate enough to pull the Trial fourth, and so had been lucky only to have one more Trial to face with a deep knife wound in his right thigh. Mika couldn't bear to think what might happen to Arra – she was quick as anything, but, whatever his hatred for Larten, she couldn't hope to match his intelligence or tactical skill. Mika wrung his hands worriedly, wondering which Trials she could choose after this one which wouldn't be impossible for her to complete even run through a few times here with a sword, and he could think of none.

Arra hadn't skipped a beat. Vancha, looking still very young sat next to the ageing Paris Skyle, nodded at the female vampire. They had lost almost all of the female vampires brought to the Mountain in these tests, with the exception of those who had never made the decision to attempt them, content with being worse respected than their peers. It was both these crushing odds stacked against her and typical male chauvinism that made most of the other vampires in the Hall shake their heads and pronounce her dead before the Trial had even begun, and even Vancha looked a little uneasy.

"May the luck of the Vampire Gods be with you, Arra Sails," he said seriously, and with a touch of sadness at his clear thought that this was another one who would not survive. Several in the Hall made the Death's Touch sign, as did Vancha, but many did not bother. Arrow placed a hand on her shoulder, a wooden gesture of comfort, and with that the Trial began.

* * *

><p>"The Maze of Blades," Larten told Seba as the two took their seats. "Is merely a game of strategy and concentration. I have had Arra knock my feet out from under me often enough to know that she will certainly not be coming unstuck on her strategy."<p>

Seba smiled, though deep down he felt Larten too optimistic. The wise older vampire also noticed the way his former assistant began to look a little uneasy when he started to think about her ability to keep her focus, and the way he then set his eyes straight ahead at the Maze, inwardly berating himself for a shadow of doubt over whether she would survive.

"I think it is very touching to hear that you think so highly of young Arra," he commented slyly, and, not missing the twinkle in the old man's eye, Larten coughed awkwardly and pointlessly re-adjusted the neck of his tunic. Letting out a soft little chuckle at his easily embarrassed former assistant, Seba focused his eyes down on the maze. He had always felt it rather cruel – there were several Trials, such as The Blooded Boars and The Maze of Blades, which Arra now faced – in which the other vampires were permitted to watch the Trial, almost as a sport. Seba knew from experience – in his much younger days, he had undertaken The Blooded Boars and found the attention of his jeering, noisy peers a particularly unwelcome distraction. In this Trial, the seating was relatively high above the maze itself, but Seba had no doubt Arra would still be able to hear the raucous vampires as she tried to concentrate. He worried, too, how a young vampire already so insecure about her ability to pass the Trials, would cope with being observed (and likely mocked) by those much more experienced than her. By the look on his former assistant's face as he stared down at the maze, Seba deduced that Larten was considering the same difficulties.

"It is quite a full crowd," Larten said nervously, and glanced around at the full benches of vampires al glaring down at the maze. "I hope they are not noisy."

The truth was, Seba realized as he analysed the faces of the vampires, the majority of them had come to see another new female vampire slaughtered – vampire or human, chauvinism was a difficult trait to stamp out. As grim as it sounded, death was such a common occurrence in the clan, especially under these circumstances, that the value of life had become next to nothing. Vampires could be cold killing their enemies in battle – and indeed Seba supposed Arra must have been cold, to kill those Vampaneze on the mountainside the night before – but they could also be cold towards their own kind. It was a disturbing characteristic of the entire race, but Seba did not allow himself to dwell too long upon something he had grown up with for many centuries.

As Vancha March signalled for the Trial to begin, the vampires fell silent. Seba allowed his eyes to drift over to Mika Ver Leth, remembering the awful feeling of dread he had felt when he had watched Larten take his own Trials, but as he found him, the black-haired General covered his own eyes with his hands, seemingly unable to watch the Trial. Arrow, in the seat next to him, placed a brotherly hand on his shoulder exactly as he had done the night before.

As Arra, relatively small from the height of the seats, became visible inside the maze, a couple of vampires in the rows behind them wolf-whistled inappropriately, and a couple across the other side of the circular block of seats laughed wheezily. Larten, as much as his face reddened with indignation at the lack of respect the other vampires treated her with, kept his eyes firmly on Arra as she took her first steps into the potentially deadly maze.

_As much as anything, _Arra remembered Vanez telling her as they had trained for the Trial months beforehand, _The Maze of Blades is a test of your hearing and your ability to concentrate solidly. _

She only wished he might have warned her that she would never be able to hear anything over her own thunderous heartbeat pounding in her ears. The walls of the maze looked to be made of stone, but at various points inside it, and it was almost impossible to judge the locations of these, there were swords ready to emerge. These were along either side, and even along the floor. The key to completing the Trial, as Arra knew, was to feel the slight vibration before the sword emerged and dodge accordingly, or to hear the turning of the cogs that worked the mechanism. Taking her first few steps into the maze, Arra could hear, see and feel absolutely nothing. All she was aware of for the first heartbeats were all of the vampires staring down at her and waiting to see her fatally injured. She couldn't conjure any of Vanez's suggestions on dealing with the pressure while she was _under _the pressure, and even Larten had never warned her of this odd stage fright she seemed to be experiencing. She wondered briefly if Mika was in attendance to see her run through with a sword. It would be a great shame that Larten should try so hard to train her only to have her fail, but she supposed eventually he would get over it.

Before she could think anything else at all, Arra heard, felt, and saw nothing before the blinding pain in her right arm. It wasn't until the sword retracted, ripping through the muscle viciously, that Arra consciously registered the agony she was in. She would later suppose she had been lucky that the sword had only sliced through her arm and not through her side, but currently her only awareness was of the pouring blood and blinding pain and how much she was _panicking_. She let out a cry of half-pain, half-hysteria, and her audience reacted accordingly, some jeering, some cheering, some murmuring worriedly. She could see them all now, finding it hilarious. She had only made it four steps before she'd wound up injured, and it was only luck that she wasn't dead (and, most likely, a matter of time). She pressed her left hand over the pulsing wound in her arm, wanting the blood to stop and gritting her teeth against the sharp shock of pain she felt from touching the tear. There was no backing out, though, and how would it feel to be stabbed by a _hundred_ stakes if she failed?

As she swayed on her feet unsteadily, she heard one voice above the others.

"Focus!" someone shouted from above her, and it took her several seconds to realize that she recognized the voice from countless early training sessions. Suddenly Larten was more inside her head that in the stands above her, and she focused on his advice as he called it down to her. "Listen for the cogs Arra! It isn't over yet!"

As usual, Larten was right. And she owed it to him to give it one last try.

So she focused. Throughout the next few minutes, despite the pain building steadily in her arm, the numbness of shock fading and needing to be replaced with adrenaline, Arra heard the cogs as they turned and she felt the vibrations under her feet as the swords prepared to emerge. Though she felt a little disoriented and a little numb, perhaps from the shock or perhaps from the pressure, she stumbled along well in a dreamlike state until she found herself stood in front of a white blank wall, and then she remembered perhaps the most important part of all.

_It's a maze._

She was foolish to have let it slip her mind, and suddenly reams of advice flooded back to her, Vanez, Arrow, Larten, all of them reminding her that though the swords were an added inconvenience, her real task was to find her way to the end of the maze. She felt so ridiculous, having travelled down the entire corridor towards a dead end, and she heard the laughter of the vampires above her magnified horribly. There was no time limit, and for that she was thankful, but the task of avoiding the swords and finding her way through a maze successfully finally struck her as almost an impossibility.

But then she remembered. She was avoiding the swords much in the same way as she would avoid the attacks from her opponents, whenever she faced a battle, and she was finding her way through a maze just like she had always managed to in Vampire Mountain's many tunnels and caves. It was just over-complicated problem solving. She had no reason to allow this to be any different from sparring with Gavner in the tunnels (except that, unlike Gavner, she had no intention of letting the Maze win). And, besides that, she couldn't have all these vampires laugh at her like Mika had earlier, like all of them _always _did. She remembered it clearly now, her determination to take the Trials not only to prove to herself and to Mika that she would be a worthy vampire, but also so that all the vampires who thought she would never be able to would have a reason to consider her an equal.

She hadn't made much success of being human, and this wasn't the easiest option, but she was determined to make a success of her second chance.

* * *

><p>Mika rested his head against the cool stone outside. Already, he felt terrible for having left the Trial, but every moment after the moment the sword had plunged into her arm, and her awful cry of pain, had been unbearable. Larten's advice to her had been equally unbearable. Mika didn't know who to place the blame of her taking the Trials in the first place onto exactly – he couldn't remember her decision being influenced by anyone in particular, he only remembered the moment she had told him, while he'd been occupied attempting to draw up a map for an important meeting the following evening, that she intended to take the Trials. She had ignored every word he'd had to say on the matter in her typical, stubborn manner – every statistic he'd thrown at her about the number of vampires who died in their attempts had left her unmoved, even suggestions that the two of them could leave and go travelling again to take her away from a society which did not respect her had fallen on deaf ears. Arra was hard-headed and unnecessarily stubborn, and, as much as Mika despised it, it was part of what he loved about her.<p>

Though he had to admit he loved it less and less as he put his hands over his eyes again, as if that would erase the whole horrible fiasco. He felt awful about their argument, and he felt even more awful about how unfeasibly obvious his feelings were becoming. He simply couldn't bear the thought of her falling for that slimy, skinny, orange-haired almost-man, knowing as well as he did that Larten Crepsley could never deserve her. He supposed, though, with a pang of dread, that none of that would matter if she died.

Even as a human, Arra hadn't been unable to defend herself. Mika had stumbled upon her at seventeen. He remembered it vividly; he had found himself an abandoned building to make home for a few days, a recently abandoned house of a family of typhoid victims, and he had been confronted with a girl posing as a woman on the doorstep when he arrived, demanding to know his purpose in her house. Having wrongly assumed that he was the new tenant, or someone from the government, not just another stray like she was, Arra had created the persona of a recently childless and widowed Mrs Peerce, the only survivor of the illness that had killed the rest of the family. He had found her out eventually, but only through perseverance and a sneaking suspicion that she was too young to have lost a twelve-year-old son. It hadn't been quite the same, but she'd always had a skill for survival, however she did it. Mika held onto a slim hope that this skill would pull her through again.

As he considered it, his prayers were answered. First the guards opened the doors, and his heart stopped at the sight of the first few vampires – they all looked vaguely solemn to him, though whether this was simply his imagination he couldn't be sure – and it was only when he saw young Gavner Purl's cheerful face that he began to think perhaps she might have somehow pulled through. It wasn't until he saw his lovely assistant himself that he allowed himself a smile; it was as though all the weight of all the worry in the world had been lifted from him suddenly. She was walking unassisted, though she had permitted Larten to take her arm (Mika was far too happy to consider it a problem), and though they were walking her to the medical wing for the awful wound in her arm, she looked happy still.

As she saw him, further along away from the crowds, her smile dropped a notch. Mika grinned back at her, delirious from pride and pure and simple joy, until he suddenly remembered with a wince that she must have realized that he hadn't been there to watch her. Just as his smile began to slip, she had already turned her own eyes away from him and back to Larten and Seba, who seemed to be delightedly congratulating her. He was half-tempted to follow her and sit her down while the medics treated her and tell her how much he regretted his behaviour in its entirety, but he supposed she would need her space, and resolved that he would catch her at midnight tomorrow, perhaps while she waited outside again.

* * *

><p>Larten hissed in sympathy as he watched the medics treat her arm. Arra had turned her head away and gritted her teeth, not making a sound, but her sharp intake of breath was indication enough of how much the application of Seba's solution was hurting her.<p>

"That must really hurt," Larten said unhelpfully, watching her jaw clench and unclench from the side, watching the tendon in her pale neck tense as she held in a whimper of pain. At his comment she let out a pained but amused little chuckle.

"Thanks so much for that," she said, and turned her head just enough to flash him a smile. "You should win awards for your observations, you know. You're so _perceptive_."

He laughed, but then the medic began stitching her arm and he was more concerned with the pain she was in. Arra squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath, though of course she took the pain exactly as he expected someone with her suffocating pride to take it, and they sat in silence for a few minutes while she forced herself not to show a sign of weakness to him or to the medic. Once the elderly healer had finished bandaging the wound, though, ad left her to recover as long as she liked in the medical cell, Larten was surprised at her change of character.

"Oww," she complained quietly as soon as the curtain over the door had been drawn, clamping a hand over her throbbing arm. "I wish it was in a sling to stop it hurting so much when I move, but I suppose that won't work at the Trial tomorrow." Then she looked up and found the energy for a smile. "It's my right arm though," she said with a smile. Larten stared back at her blankly and she rolled her eyes, as though she was being forced to explain something to a painfully slow child. "Remember how we practiced without my right arm? I suppose I'm fully prepared to have lost use of it."

"Do you feel like you will be able to use it at all tomorrow?" he asked her, and she frowned as she considered it.

"I don't know," she said. "I wouldn't want to test it now, in case I pull out the stitches. But then I only have until tomorrow night to gain use of it again. It depends on the Trial."

"If you drew The Path of Needles," Larten said, ignoring it when she winced at the very idea of having to use her incredibly sore arm to support her entire weight. "Do you think you could manage with your arm as it is?"

She considered for a moment, and then simply lay back on the hammock they provided in all of the medical cells. "Stop asking me pointless questions," she said, though it was clear that she was not angry with him. "I haven't got a choice really, have I? I will do my best with what I've got."

Larten pulled his chair up closer to sit beside her, close enough that he could see her staring up at the ceiling. "Would you like me to go and fetch Mika?" he asked quietly, and she snapped her eyes from the ceiling to his instantly, as though she was shocked that he had been able to see what she had been thinking about. In reality, to Larten, it hadn't been so difficult. On their way to the medical wing they had discussed the Trial, her arm, the crowd in the Trial and their occasional inappropriate responses, the possibility of practising at all tonight and whether she felt like eating - everything but her obvious main concern. He hadn't wanted to push the issue – Arra seemed to rarely appreciate being pushed to speak about things she was trying to avoid – but he had assumed Mika would make an appearance within a few minutes at the medical cell. When it began to seem like he wasn't going to, she had grown quieter and quieter, and Larten was willing to face the man he so badly wanted to punish for upsetting her and force himself to be civil, if it meant she could feel a little more at ease.

She was silent for a moment, until he stood to leave and she called him back.

"I expected him to come and find me," she blurted, in a rare but not unwelcome moment of vulnerability. "I thought that he hadn't apologized before but at least he would be along to congratulate me."

Larten nodded, and sat back down beside her. She pulled herself upright into a sitting position with her one good arm, the other slung across her lap uselessly. "I thought you might have been thinking about Mika," he said patiently. "I am sure Mika is doing the same. I am perfectly willing to fetch him, if you think you would like to speak to him."

She shook her head and sighed, shifting in her hammock so that she was facing him. "I don't want to argue with him," she admitted quietly. "But I was angry before now about the fiasco with my training, angrier still today after we argued, and angrier still when I realized he hadn't even watched the Trial. I feel as though Mika doesn't respect me, when he is the one person I feel should. And it bothers me that I know Mika doesn't believe I'll pass the Trials, however unlikely it is, because surely if anyone should think I'm able to, it should be my mentor."

After that revelation, she looked down at her limp hand and bit her lip, worrying that perhaps she had revealed too much for someone who usually revealed so little, but Larten placed a hand over the other. She had managed, somehow, to retain her usual beauty and elegance, even with her bandaged arm and her obvious exhaustion, and it was just emphasized by the way she blushed just ever so slightly, and the way it was highlighted in the low candlelight of the cell. "Mika means well," he told her, even though he wasn't sure he believed that himself, focusing on the desire to make her a little happier rather than the desire to tell her his point of view. "I think his only crime is caring too much for you." _And caring in the wrong way_, he thought, but didn't say so.

Arra nodded half-heartedly, but it was clear she didn't entirely agree. Then she half-smiled and met his eyes again, hers warmer than usual, most likely from a combination of the light, her amusement and his own hopeful imagination. "Why is it," she began, a little hesitantly. "That if Mika doesn't think I'll make it, Vanez doesn't think I'll make it, Arrow certainly doesn't think I'll make it, half of the vampires here haven't even entertained the possibility of my survival, that you still seem to think I'll be able to get through it?"

Larten smiled. "Because you _can _do it," he said, wondering the best way to give her a little confidence and unable to think of anything that might get through to her. More importantly than all of the people she had listed, it was Arra herself who did not believe she would make it, and that was the only thing holding her back in his opinion. "I know it has been difficult, but you are better than you know."

"You're sure it's not just because you're dim?"

Removing the hand he had placed over hers in order to cup her chin gently and turn her face up towards him, Larten laughed. "Firstly, I resent that," he said, keeping his hand resting on her chin and jawline despite no resistance on the other end. "Secondly, you are being facetious. Thirdly, you still do not sound much like you are believing in yourself, and lastly," he said, as she raised an eyebrow, waiting impatiently for him to finish his sentence and on the brink of reminding him that he still hadn't learnt to shut up. "_Lastly_," he repeated, "Do _not _tell me to shut up again."

She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, overcome by the glimpse of her vulnerability and the heat of her skin and how much he adored her, Larten had darted forwards to press his lips to hers. He knew it was a poor choice of action, with her so angry about Mika and exhausted from the Trial and probably on the verge of slapping him already, but the effort of holding himself back had finally stopped seeming worthwhile. When she didn't move at all, or reciprocate, he pulled back a little and let his hand slip away from her. He stumbled over the words for an apology, ashamed of his own boyish clumsiness, but then thankfully her hand closed over the back of his neck and pulled him forwards for another kiss.

* * *

><p>that took an obscenely long time to write, and if anyone is reading, i'm sorry it was so long! thinking of the trial took a while, and so did trying to work in all the different elements of the chapter. i hope it was worth reading. bry<p> 


	4. Chapter 4

**the hardest of hearts IV**

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><p><strong>just wanted to say thanks so much for all reviews so far - and rowan rawr, your review has really made this worth writing! much appreciated praise, especially from as good a writer as you are. thanks again :) to readers, hope the chapter is enjoyable. bry<strong>

* * *

><p>She wasn't outside the next evening. Mika had risen long before midnight, unable to sleep from thinking of her, and had waited until the sunset was nearly over to sit at her usual spot and wait. He supposed perhaps she had second guessed him; but if she had known he would be waiting for her, it surprised him more than anything that she would go out of her way to avoid him. Though Arra's temper was legendary, arguments with her were short-lived – she faced everything head-on with her typical stubbornness, never gave her opponent the satisfaction of seeing her run from an issue. He began to become impatient when the last rays of the sunset ceased and looked elsewhere for her, but she was not training, she was not in her cell or his, she was not eating, she had not been seen. It wasn't enough to worry him; it was very early and only a few vampires, insomniacs like him mainly, who were awake at this hour. However, Arra's nerves over the Trials had kept her up for weeks now, and yet, nobody had seen her.<p>

Lastly, he wandered to the medical wing. He felt a little sick at the idea that she might have spent the night there – he hoped with all his heart that her injury hadn't been bad enough to warrant the overnight stay – but when he enquired after her, one of the elderly healers nodded and led him along to one of the cells.

"Why did she not return to her own cell?" Mika asked the old vampire, his voice hitching up a notch with panic. "She has a Trial tonight; will she be able to face it?"

The elderly man, who was so old that his back had begun to hunch unattractively, turned to smile gently at the General. "Is she your assistant?" he asked, his eyes kind. Mika, however, frowned instinctively. He knew it was childish, but he disliked the assumption that there was no possibility that she could have been anything else. She _was _his assistant, but would people continue to judge that she was too young to be anything else if they were ever to become mates? He supposed that was becoming frighteningly far-fetched, but that hardly improved his mood.

"That wasn't the answer to my question," Mika growled. "Will she be able to face her Trial?"

The old man didn't take offence at the tone the younger man was taking with him. The healers were an odd bunch – usually vampires who had become too old to continue their service to the clan in any way other than attempting to save the lives of the younger generation after battles (and, occasionally, Trials). They were all oddly distant from the rest of the clan, mostly kept to themselves and had a different lifestyle to the others, and Mika didn't feel that pointing out his superior position in the clan would get him anywhere with the teasing elderly medic. Though they understood the vampire hierarchy, the medical staff did not feel a part of it, and other than the Princes, they treated all of the vampires the same. Mika supposed that must have been a consequence of treating vampires on the battlefield. They all looked and behaved exactly the same on the brink of death.

The medic took a few moments to answer him, and stared up at him a little oddly. "I imagine she will be capable of it, yes," he said slowly. "It was only a cut in her arm after all. She will be very lucky not to face worse, don't you agree?"

Mika let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. The problem with giving her some space after her Trial had been that he had not been able to glean the nature of her injuries. He hadn't been able to look at her at all during the Trial – he had kept his eyes glued to his lap, his hands, the floor, anything other than the figure of his former assistant putting her life on the line in front of him – and he had judged everything by the cry of pain she had let out, and the gasps and murmurs of those around him. It had been unbearable, but watching the shirt she wore blossom into red from the blood had been worse, and that had been as much as he could bear. The medic, of course, treated the injury as though it were absolutely insignificant. The amount of death the healers witnessed must have been enormous, and so it was no surprise that a sword ripping a muscle hadn't been much of a trauma for them all to deal with.

"Why did she stay in the medical wing?" Mika asked. "Did you need to watch her?"

The medic smiled again, and let out a wheezy little chuckle. "Of course not!" he said, still shuffling along the long corridor with Mika impatiently trotting along behind. "It was only a little cut in her arm you must understand. We stitched it up and bandaged it up and that was that." He made a sweeping gesture with his elderly branches of arms. "Good as new!"

Mika did not see the humour. He was not known for his patience, or for his sense of humour, nor for his kindness. He did not find it particularly easy to suffer this old fool, whether or not this same old fool had been the one to treat his beloved assistant's injuries.

"So," the black-haired vampire said slowly, the hint of a growl behind his thin veneer of tolerance. He placed one of his mammoth hands on the shoulder of the medic, half a gesture of friendship and half a hinted threat. Mika wasn't a gentle man, and he wasn't the type of man to suffer idiots. "Could you tell me _finally _why she stayed the night in the medical wing, if she was _good as new_, as you say?"

The medic was not threatened in the least. "Well, sir," the healer began in a typical, long-winded manner. "You see, we stitched her up and we bandaged her up and we made sure she wasn't in too much pain, and then we left her alone. You know, to get her bearings. We said she could show herself out whenever she liked. But, poor sweet girl, she must have been so exhausted, she fell asleep after an hour or so and we didn't see it fit to wake her."

Again, Mika let out a sigh of relief. The medic came to an abrupt halt outside one of the thin muslin curtains, waving his arm at it to indicate that this was the one Mika was looking for. After saying a curt thank you to the man who had been so desperately unhelpful, Mika took another deep breath, thought briefly about how he might phrase an apology, and then pulled back the curtain to step inside. "Arra," he began hesitantly, and then came to an abrupt halt when he realized she was still asleep – and with _Crepsley_ in tow.

Mika thought perhaps he'd never seen anything worse. He read every possible problem into the way they'd slept – part of his mind instantly rationalized that she had been injured and probably shaken up by the Trial, and that perhaps this ginger nightmare had just been there for moral support – but the other, dominant parts of his entire self just wanted to break creepy Crepsley's arms. It was the way her head was nuzzled in under his chin, the way one of his weedy little hands rested on her back far_ too close to the hip_, how _comfortable_ they looked, the way their legs had intertwined in the hammock – the whole scene was just wrong, and though his instinct was to leave, Mika forced himself to stride over and gently shake her shoulder, coughing loudly and pointedly.

Larten's eyes creaked open first, and the brief moment of silence when the two men locked icy stares was only broken when Arra shifted, opened her eyes against Larten's collar and then shifted to see her mentor frowning down at her. The moment of confusion completely overwhelmed her, and she stuttered over a greeting before attempting to pull herself into a sitting position, forgetting about her injured arm entirely until the pain hit her sharply as the torn muscle spasmed. Larten stopped her, putting a hand over her arm to remind her of her injury. The brief moment that Mika could have imagined where their eyes met, and Crepsley had the nerve to _smirk_ at her, nearly set his temper alight completely.

"It's getting really late," Mika said, struggling to keep his voice even when he could so easily have slipped into vicious shouting. "You should have been awake a long time ago." That was another stab in his heart, that for weeks she hadn't been sleeping and now Larten Crepsley on his white horse had given her some _peace. _The whole situation really grated on his nerves, and his imagination had run away with him completely – everything they did now looked like a cover up for whatever they had done when he hadn't been around to watch them, the eye contact, the way he touched her arm, the way he helped her sit up, the disgusting look in his eyes all suggested things Mika rationally knew hadn't _really _been possible in a medical hammock.

Arra had noticed the tension as soon as her head had cleared from sleep and pain. She swung her legs over the edge of the hammock, careful not to put any unnecessary pressure on her aching arm, and dragged herself to her feet in front of her furious mentor – _so_ furious that it practically radiated from him in waves – and then ran a hand over her eyes.

"You are probably right," she said to Mika, though she kept her eyes averted, unable to look right at him knowing how angry he was with her. She mumbled something about eating before the Trial and needing to change clothes, and then eyes kept firmly away from the two of them, hurried out into the corridor. Mika realized he had been wrong about her facing problems head-on, these days at least.

Larten was in no similar rush to leave. He had the audacity to lie back down, hands behind his head, and stare up at Mika. "Arra is very worried," the orange-haired man said calmly, a complete juxtaposition to Mika's clenched fists and angry scowl. "I had not realized how worried. You," the younger man said, and raised a hand to point in Mika's direction. "Have hopefully begun work on an apology?"

It was too much. The combination of his earlier impatience with the elderly medic, his anger at Arra for reasons he had trouble exactly identifying and his desire to cause Larten Crepsley as much pain as possible for various reasons he could identify with ease, led to the broad General reaching into the hammock and pulling the lankier vampire up unceremoniously by the collar of his tunic. The insolent look in his eyes just spurred him on – and he knew this slimy boy wouldn't fight him back, to preserve his moral high ground – and it was all far too easy, in that moment, for Mika to slam one of the fists he'd held clenched since the moment he'd arrived at the medical wing straight into Larten's jaw.

Though Crepsley clicked his tongue and spat out one of his teeth and sniffed, he said nothing. He made no move to attack, he made no move to get away. He simply sat there, nearly choked by Mika's grip on his collar, and stared up at the General with eyes that asked _is it going to make you feel any better?_

Mika released him. "Not going to fight back, Larten?" he asked, though as he turned away and rubbed his knuckles, he knew that even by posing the question he had set himself up for a speech on morality.

"There is no point," Crepsley replied, although he stumbled over a couple of the syllables in his current inability to move his jaw as usual. "You do not really want to fight with me and I have no desire to fight with you. Even if I felt I could manage to defeat you, why should I want to do so?"

"Stop speaking in riddles," Mika growled. "I think it's quite clear I'd like to fight with you."

Larten laughed humourlessly. Mika could not see his face, but he could picture the look in his eyes, mocking and superior. "But only because you feel guilty," he pointed out. For a long moment neither of them said anything, and then Mika heard rather than saw Larten climb down from the hammock and straighten up his tunic. "As much as I have enjoyed speaking with you, Mika," Larten said sarcastically. "I would not want to run late for the Trial. You may have made a habit of not attending them, but I rather like to be present when someone I care for takes their life in their hands"

With that, and with the black-haired General's back still turned on him, Larten let out a half-impatient, haf-saddened sigh, and, clutching his sore jaw, slipped out into the corridor, leaving Mika to consider the issues he faced.

* * *

><p>Arra joined Arrow outside the Hall of Princes a few moments before the Trial would be called. Arrow rounded on her instantly. "You are not usually so late," he said archly, but she looked back at him in a way that suggested she had never cared less about anything as she did about her punctuality, and he instantly softened. Then he shifted awkwardly. "Have you seen Mika?"<p>

"Yes." she answered with some finality, unwilling to be drawn into conversation about her mentor with his one confidant. She liked Arrow, in a distant, respectful sense, but she didn't trust him when it came to Mika. He would not have been her choice of person to discuss the situation she found herself in with, certainly, when she knew that anything she said to Arrow would be relayed back to Mika in a matter of hours. The relationship between the men both pleased and confused her; she had never quite gotten to the bottom of when and why they had become so remarkably close, but Mika had hinted at being practically brought up together and being more like brothers than friends. They were outwardly similar, but inwardly, Arra thought, very different. Arrow had the same sense of pride she sometimes recognized in herself, and she considered him blindly noble, with a grasp of morals she half-envied and half-pitied. He, like Mika, saw some things in a very black and white way – such as their joint hatred towards the Vampaneze and their joint unwavering loyalty to the clan – but then she also thought Mika was far more complex. Arrow wasn't stupid, of course, but he followed things through doggedly and imposed moral restrictions on himself that he would never have expected others to conform to. Mika, though he was noble and brave, was also cunning, and had the capacity to be downright sneaky when it came down to it. If Mika needed to get something done, for what he perceived to be "the greater good", he wouldn't consider it too outrageous to break his own moral code to do it.

Arrow, without his friend's sense of cunning, just sighed.

"Arra," he said, hands open in a gesture of complete honesty that Mika never would have performed. Out of the two, Mika was far more guarded, far less inclined to allow those around him to make their own, uninfluenced decisions than Arrow was. Some would have said he was cleverer, but at this moment in time, Arra, in her current state of disenchantment with her mentor, was simply inclined to call him sneakier. "You must know how much Mika is worried about you. He couldn't even stay to _watch _the Trial yesterday; it pained him so much to see you in danger. Do you understand that this kind of behaviour is not like him?"

Arra couldn't stop herself from rolling her eyes. "I've known him many years Arrow," she said, careful not to let her temper take over (however tempting). "I'm aware he's not given to being overly emotional."

"It worries him as much, if not more, how far apart he feels the two of you have grown," Arrow continued. "He told me he hardly sees you unless he goes to watch you training, which he often can't. Do you know that it's not like Mika at all to worry about something like that?"

Arra couldn't get past the feeling that she was being patronised – something she felt more often than not in conversation with Arrow. "Yes," she said again, sharply. "But I can't help that I've been training and he's been working. Mika thinks I'm going to die and so he feels bad for not seeing me enough."

Arrow sighed. "Perhaps it is partly that," he conceded, but he looked worried. He was a tall man, and though Arra had always been a ridiculous height for a woman, her legs too long for the rest of her, the way Arrow stared down at her was contributing to how looked down upon she felt. "But Mika knows how angry you are with him, Arra, and I've rarely ever seen him so concerned."

"It was just an argument," she said impatiently. "I'm angry with him now but I will forgive him if I'm still here to forgive him in a couple of weeks. He is my mentor. He knows that there's very little he could do to make me angry with him forever – Mika saved my life when I was a human and I won't forget that in a hurry. If he's really _that _worried, I have to say I think he's being a little bit over-sensitive."

Arrow looked like he hadn't gotten his point across. "But, Arra," he said. "Over-sensitive has never described Mika. Why _else _do you think he might be so concerned about your welfare, your opinion of him, whether you are drifting apart?"

Arra frowned. She shrugged half-heartedly. "Arrow, is there something you mean to tell me?" she asked eventually when he said nothing to clarify his meaning. "If you are trying to get across that Mika cares about me –"

"But, Arra," he interrupted her. "_How much_ does Mika care about you? I just think you should think about it."

Before she had much chance to think about it, though, the guard at the door called them in. Arra felt briefly bad that she hadn't seen Larten or Mika again before the Trial, feeling it probably necessary to apologize to one or possibly both of them, but Larten's words from the night before rang in her mind, and she considered that it was a possibility that she might make it through this Trial anyway. She could speak to them when she was finished. Even if other people didn't believe in her, Larten, who had trained her honestly and knew exactly how hard she had worked, had decided to. For the first time, heading into the Hall of Princes, Arra realized that, whether she would go on to survive the Trials aside, she _deserved _to survive them. She could only hope that fate also recognized the extent to which she deserved it.

* * *

><p>"Number twenty-three," the guard announced, and Arra's stomach dropped. "The Path of Needles."<p>

The uneasy silence in the crowd of assembled vampires after the Trial had been called made her feel sick. Her arm was already aching at the thought of it, and she almost smiled as she remembered Larten's question over whether she would be able to face The Path of Needles. She would have to punish him at some point for tempting fate. She had never struggled much with her balance, which would assist her, but her hands still stung from her perilous climb in her first Trial, and her right arm was nowhere near strong enough to haul her along the stalagmites, or to catch the falling stalactites. She supposed there was no limit to time, and her legs were in reasonably good shape, but it was hardly to be considered the best news. It was one of the worst Trials for her to pull with one arm out of use, certainly, but there was no point in dwelling on it.

There was a moment of brief and unnecessary awkwardness as Arrow escorted her to the mouth of the deadly tunnel, and struggled to find an appropriate way to ask her what she was planning on wearing for the duration of the Trial. She allowed him to struggle for several moments, wondering if he would ever be able to spit the words out, before rolling her eyes at his poor attempt and unbuttoning her shirt. She so often preached that she should not be treated any differently to the other male vampires, and she supposed, modesty aside, it would have been hypocritical of her in her struggle to obtain equality to ask for any sort of special consideration. She ignored the reaction of the crowd who had gathered to watch her third attempt – Seba Nile, she would later find out, had thought it horrifically inappropriate, and had caused a fuss at the back of the room that she hadn't noticed, and that Vancha March had tactically quietened, the young Prince typically delighted. Arra remembered training for the Trial, and the way the leather had clung to her uncomfortably and made the entire journey more troublesome, and didn't feel the same discomfort necessary simply to avoid a lecherous crowd.

Leaving her clothes piled next to Arrow's feet – he shifted uncomfortably in a way that almost would have made her laugh, had the situation not been so dire – she stood at the entrance to the Trial as Paris Skyle, reassuringly unaffected and unsurprised by the scene, wished her luck and declared that the Trial had begun.

Once inside the treacherous tunnel, she forgot about the proceedings outside entirely. She was thankful that she was not a larger vampire for one of the first times. She was catlike in her movements in a way she couldn't imagine someone a little more like Gavner would ever be able to be. Years of her own homemade gymnastics training – she had practised for hours on end every day for years under her false pretence that she could one day join a circus and escape her father when she was older, though the dream never came true – came flooding back to her, and she was as graceful and as fluid as she could manage to be, relying mainly on her left arm and pressing her right into her side to stop it from becoming an inconvenience, not making a sound as she manoeuvred through the first wave of needles. She could feel her legs being ripped to shreds as she attempted to climb through the stalagmites, but she was thankful again for her size. She noticed herself threading through gaps that larger vampires would never have been able to without ever grazing a stalagmite, leaving her legs unscathed and the silence preserved, and she made a note to herself to remember that being smaller and female still had its advantages.

As she felt herself growing perhaps a little overconfident about the Trial – she had noticed the end already, the light streaming through towards her, and she congratulated herself early on a job _magnificently_ done – she reached a patch where the stalagmites and the stalagtites grew further and further apart, but became larger. She had done excellently crawling through the small gaps, as graceful as could be, but the longer she had to stretch the more difficult her job became. She made the attempt to stand on the edge of a blunt stalagmite, hoping to stretch her back from all the crouching she had done. She got to her feet carefully, absently stretched and thanked her left arm for all its hard work so far, and rotated her shoulders to work out some of the stiffness before continuing. Bending to the side to test her back, she prepared to crouch again and continue her journey – and, while she prepared to kneel, her right foot slipped on the surface of the stalagmite, crashing painfully and loudly into the sharp crystals behind it. She was forced to fling out both arms to steady herself, her right bursting into pain instantly at the unexpected rush of movement, and, having had no time to check either of the sharp peaks in front of her for stability, both let out a sickeningly loud crack when she forced her weight upon them.

The variety of cracks and the breaking of the few stalagmites behind her, she knew, was too much noise for the delicate cavern. She manoeuvred herself around instantly to face the treacherous ceiling, unwilling to face the ultimate humiliation of being stabbed in the back, and artfully dodged a few falling stakes that flew down towards her legs. Using her left arm to support herself on top of the stalagmites, she had only her right arm – she could see the blood leaking through the dressing already, and dreaded the thought of having destroyed the stitches – to defend herself against the stalactite that plummeted from the roof towards her chest. Unable to catch it with one hand, and unwilling to try when she alkready knew the stalagmites in this area of the tunnel to be fragile, Arra took a deep breath, and did exactly what Vanez Blane had advised her never to do – swept her right arm across her chest frantically, sending the lethal spike flying off towards one of the walls, and landing there with a pronounced _crash. _

The stalactites fell all around her after her mistake, and she had to consciously overcome the very real temptation to shut her eyes and accept her fate. A few smaller stalactites pierced into her calves, thighs and, one, into her shoulder, which caused Arra nearly to let out a whimpering cry of pain, but she knew the danger of movement was that she could bring the entire roof down, and so she bore the shower of smaller needles with gritted teeth, dodging the few larger ones. Her left hand, which had supported her all this time, had gone completely numb from the effort of holding onto the sharp stalagmite, and she worried more than anything about that – she knew that she had probably cut so deep on top of her existing injuries from the first Trial that she had cut the nerves, and she began to worry about her fingers and injury to the tendons. When the shower stopped, she made the decision she had hoped not to have to make. Pushing forwards with her legs, feeling that one of them was dripping with blood from her initial slip across the dangerously sharp floor, Arra reached out her right hand to grasp the next stalagmite, and, retracting her deeply injured left hand, fought to place all of her weight on her right arm. The pressure on the muscle was very nearly unbearable – if she focused on it, she swore she could feel the blood _pump _out of the wound the longer she attempted to hold her grip. A couple of tears of pure agony escaped her as she fought to reach the end of the tunnel, wiping her left hand on her leg to remove some of the blood and wincing at the way the remaining skin on her palm flared at the contact.

Luckily, the Vampire Gods had apparently finally decided to take a liking to her. Overcome with the pain in her arm and hand, as well as the various injuries from the smaller stalactites, Arra focused on moving quicker and quicker towards the end of the tunnel, knowing that her right arm would be unable to bear her weight any longer in a matter of minutes. It was the sort of risk that she knew, even at the time, was likely to cost her life, and she could hear Vanez's voice in her mind telling her to slow down and test the stalagmites, but nothing mattered as much to her anymore as being able to leave the deadly cavern. As she crawled towards the end, transferring her weight back onto her left arm despite how much it pained her, she was forced to swipe at another large stalactite as it fell from the roof. The crash was thunderous, and Arra remembered Vanez's advice with startling clarity – _you cannot hope to rush The Path of Needles and make it out alive – _but it simply no longer seemed to apply to her. So close to the end, she forced herself into a crouching position and _ran_ at full pelt out onto ordinary ground, hearing the loud splintering smashes as the entire roof collapsed in her wake.

Mika raced forward to help her to her feet, but when he attempted to pull her up by her right forearm, she let out an animal cry of pain – more recognizable as a _howl_ than as anything remotely human – and pressed her weight down on her left forearm instead, brushing her mentor away and climbing to her feet. He attempted to embrace her, but, unable to get her point across in words, she pushed him back, unable to communicate to him that she couldn't bear the wounds to be touched. Hurt, Mika stepped back and allowed Larten to place a cloak around her shoulders. Even the rustle of that light fabric made her hiss, but she was thankful for it, and wrapped it closer around her.

"Can you walk?" Larten asked, ignoring the cheers of the vampires around her. Arra had not smiled once, too injured to appreciate her success. Gavner raced towards them in delight, but Larten waved the excitable young man away out of concern for her. Arra attempted to press her right foot to the floor, but then, with a burning explosion of pain, remembered her foolish slip in the tunnel. She looked down to see her right leg invisible beneath the blood that covered it. She shuddered at that – she hadn't felt the pain fully until now, but now that it was present it was inescapable agony. She looked up hazily to see Larten's face drained of all colour, except for a curious blossom of purple and black at his jaw that she had never noticed before, but before she could say anything to put across her uncertainty of getting to the medical wing unassisted, she saw his face swim across her vision, and then lost consciousness entirely.

* * *

><p>Some hours later, Arra creaked open an eye to see the familiar ceiling of the medical cell she had occupied the night before. Instantly, as she realized the disabling pain she was in, she let out a groan of pain, and she felt someone brush her hair back from her forehead. Of course, it was Larten – the most loyal of them all – and she chuckled despite her pain.<p>

"I'm starting to think this is my cell now," she remarked, and he laughed. He looked altogether far too cheerful for her liking, and she frowned up at him. "Try and look a little more concerned, perhaps," she suggested sarcastically, smiling to show him she wasn't really serious. "I'm in pain you know, Larten, and you grinning at me isn't helping much."

He continued smiling infuriatingly, and then pulled up his chair to sit beside her.

"I am smiling because I have news that you will appreciate," he told her. "I fought off everyone else to be the one to tell you."

She smiled again at the childishness of that. She couldn't think of any news that would have made her happy or lessened her discomfort to any extent, so she just waited patiently, staring blankly up at him.

"Bode Heiss and his assistant have arrived."

She chuckled. "That's fantastic," she said sarcastically. "I can't say I was particularly charmed by Bode or his grimy assistant at last Council, but thanks for the information."

"Arra," Larten pushed, still smiling. "Consider what it means. Bode and Serge have been delayed by the weather conditions you faced a couple of nights ago. They are the last two to arrive."

Arra was still blank over the significance of that for another couple of moments, and then, with a wave of relief, let out a laugh. "It's the Festival of the Undead?" she asked hopefully, and, delighted with the news, Larten leaned down to cup her face in his hands and kiss her. Though she would not have admitted it, Arra was grateful for that. She had wondered briefly over her bat broth whether their relationship would descend into an uncomfortable, distant one, or whether the night before had merely been spur of the moment. Clearly, charmingly, Larten had never once entertained such concerns.

He stopped smiling a minute later, though, and hooked a hand around her waist to pull her into a sitting position. She remembered then, noticing the way he avoided her arms and hands, how much pain she had been in. "Did I pull the stitches out of my arm?" she asked, wincing at the thought and unable to remember when or how she might have done it, only vividly remembering the concern she'd had while conscious about it.

"It is not important," Larten told her. "They have stitched it up again."

"Do my hands work?" she asked, flexing her fingers to make sure they still existed and were still functional.

"Clearly, the answer to that is yes," Larten answered patiently.

Satisfied that she hadn't actually lost any limbs, Arra made to lay back down to ease the already growing pains, but then she reached out a hand towards Larten's face. Her eyes were clearing a little, no longer blinded by pain or sleep, and she wondered why she hadn't seen it before.

"How did you get that?" she asked, gently touching the purplish bruise across his jawline, brow creased in concern.

Larten opened his mouth, and then promptly shut it again. He considered telling her the truth; he'd often found, after a number of years lying to women and failing to get away with it that honesty really was the best policy, but then what purpose did that serve? He remembered Mika's fury after she had left the room, half-angry, half-desperate. Larten couldn't hate Mika for the few things he'd slipped up on. Without Mika, Larten could never have known his assistant, and life without said assistant was suddenly starting to seem more and more embarrassingly far-fetched for someone who, only a few years ago, would have labelled himself a womanizer. Mika had tried his best to help Arra in any way possible, and though it had all been transparently a long-term method of forcing her feelings towards him, Larten couldn't help but respect him for it. From what little he had heard of Arra's human life, Mika had been the one saving grace for her entire lifetime, and it was difficult to force himself to despise Mika, whether or not he had let her down in the end, simply for having feelings for her. Larten imagined it all in the reverse – devoting his life to this wonderful, beautiful, special girl, holding back his feelings for years and then turning around one day to unexpectedly find her attention drawn elsewhere. He disliked Mika Ver Leth, certainly, for the unacceptable way he had behaved over the years the two had known each other and the way he had almost cost his assistant's life with his overwhelming paternalistic attitude towards her, but Larten also understood him. Suddenly the last thing he wanted to do was to ruin their relationship entirely, when he knew how Mika must have tormented himself over her, and how much Arra worried over her strained relationship with her mentor. Even if it meant he lost her to Mika in the end, which he supposed was a distinct possibility, how could be live with himself if he destroyed a relationship that meant so much to both of them?

"Ah," he said, and shook his head as though it was nothing. "I was sparring earlier with Gavner. Trust him to get in one good hit when I was least expecting it."

Accepting that explanation, Arra lay back again to sleep, and Larten, leaning over to kiss her on her forehead, pulled up a chair to sit beside her and make sure someone was there when she woke up, wondering if Mika would ever know the favour his supposed arch-enemy had done for him.


	5. Chapter 5

**the hardest of hearts V**

sorry for the long wait, if anyone is reading! much inspiration taken from the story "Sober Thoughts are Drunken Disasters" by roxypony – if you're reading this, I hope you don't mind that the mika scene is largely inspired by yours!

Vampire's ability to heal quickly aside, Arra had not felt up to testing her shredded right leg on the first night of the Festival. She had meandered back to her own cell, walking with effort, and had swatted Larten away as soon as it had turned midnight. Though he would have stayed with her, and he had needed convincing to leave, it was plain to her that he would have been saddened to miss the first night's festivities. As she replaced the bandages around her hands and considered whether she might be healed almost completely by the time the Festival drew to a close, it became clear that she had not gotten rid of the persistent orange-haired man so easily. He crept into the cell almost shyly, looking hilariously dapper in the suit he had chosen, and she couldn't stop herself from chuckling a little at the way the red had risen in his pale cheeks.

"Don't look so embarrassed," she chided him, though she could barely stop herself from laughing. He was always so stern and confident, prided himself on his decorum, and yet dressed in his fancy clothes he looked oddly uncomfortable. "You look fine."

"Fine!" he repeated, blushing more openly and throwing his hands out in a gesture of surrender. "Please do not tell me I have gone to all of this effort merely to look _fine_."

This time, she really couldn't contain her laughter. "You look _dashing,_" she told him, which only served to heighten his embarrassment. "Why, I hardly think I've ever laid eyes upon a man with such _effortless_—"

Unable to take her teasing any longer, Larten interrupted her by covering her in a fabric she did not recognize. As soon as she had rustled her way out of the thing he had thrown over her, she caught sight of a hem and realized his intention. It was not like her to feel particularly touched by anything, but suddenly his embarrassment made perfect sense, and the fact that he had been anxious about making the gesture only served to make it a little more adorable.

"Larten, no," she said, even though she felt he looked so sweet shuffling his feet like a nervous teenager and it truly did pain her to refuse him. "It was a nice thought, honestly. But have you seen my leg?"

With a little more of the personality she was used to, Larten seemed to pull himself back together. He straightened up and levelled his most stern glare at her, striding over and holding out his hands to help her up. "If you think I had Seba search the entire Mountain for that only for you to tell me your leg is too sore," he said, a hint of mock warning in his voice. "Then I am afraid, Miss Sails, you may find you have another thing coming."

She laughed openly at his attempt to be strict with her. "I just wouldn't want to –"

"I care very little about your excuses," he told her, but his eyes were twinkling to show her that he wasn't serious. "I will take it as a personal insult if you refuse to put on that dress and join in."

"Well, I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid you might just have to be somewhat insulted."

Changing tack, Larten shrugged, taking the dress back out of her hands and folding the dark green material over his arm. "I respect your wishes of course," he said pompously, and then shrugged. "Of course, I am not responsible for what everyone else might think of your decision. I did try to tell Gavner that you were too injured, but I think he said something about women and their precious nature –"

"Oh for the love of the Vampire Gods," Arra groaned, snatching the dress back from him and sizing it up with disdain. "I'll wear your dress and I'll come for the celebrations. If I die in a few days, on your head be it."

Grinning and satisfied with her eventual inability to refuse him, Larten slipped back out of the cell and towards the Halls to wait for her. He wondered briefly if she would be able to force herself to wear the dress when she looked at it properly – it had been all he could find for her, the Mountain not exactly overflowing with women's formal garments – but then supposed that even if she looked laughable, she had promised him now that she would join him, and she wasn't one to care too much about appearances anyway. And, wearing a dress or not, he wouldn't settle to the thought of her spending the entire Festival resting and missing out on all of the celebrations.

* * *

><p>Arrow found Mika drowning his sorrows in ale, half of his face bloody from a skirmish with another vampire earlier in the evening (and, having seen the state of the other vampire, Arrow found it hard to find any pity for Mika's injury). Other than that fight – and it had been a vicious exertion of his temper rather than sport – he didn't look much like he had been enjoying the festivities. Arrow found it relatively hard to identify with the position in which Mika found himself, and therefore found it nearly impossible to offer him any advice relating to it. Arra was a difficult and complicated girl to have chosen as an assistant, as far as he could see it, and, as much potential as she possessed, Arrow did not understand where Mika's head had really been in blooding her. He had inappropriately fallen for a damaged girl, and rather than recognizing the wrong in his emotions, his decision had been to blood her and keep her around forever, constantly tormenting himself with the want of her and the stupidity of his own actions. Arrow knew from their training that she was a determined fighter, but she was probably nothing too special, and with her uncontrollable ambition coupled with her ridiculous temper, Arrow thought she was probably a flame that would burn too bright to live for long. The way he saw it, Mika had wasted years training a pretty, sharp-witted and possibly semi-talented assistant all out of an ailing hope that they might one day be able to spend the remainder of their lives together. It was a pitiful sight to watch the man Arrow considered his brother wrestle with his conscience over it, but Arrow had very little to say to him about it that he would want to hear.<p>

"There isn't much point moping around, Mika," he said, taking a seat next to the dark General. "I suppose you'll just have to take an order from your superior and stop being so ridiculously miserable." Arrow was on the verge of becoming a Prince, possibly only a month or so away from his investiture, and he had taken great delight in his newfound superiority over Mika. The two had always been incredibly competitive, but Arrow was the elder, and understandably he had always been a step or two ahead. There was no doubt in his mind, though, that, given all the right circumstances, Mika would follow him into becoming a Prince in only a few decades. There was no other General Arrow could think of, biased as he was, who could deserve it as much.

"The day I take any orders from you is the day you can cart me off to the Hall of Death," Mika growled, taking another sip of ale. "And I am not moping. I am merely resting. Aksel Vonn thinks he's won the wrestling for tonight and he's parading it about in a way I can't stand. I'm looking forward to the satisfying breaking of his legs."

It might have been funnier had Arrow felt that Mika was joking. He was downing his ale and slamming down the mug in a way that suggested he was too angry to appreciate the jovial mood of the other vampires, and was looking forward not to some gentle sparring and cheerful catching up with old friends, but rather only to an excuse to cause anyone who crossed him some serious harm.

Arrow held his breath. "Mm, I spoke to Arra," he said awkwardly, bracing himself for the injuries he might suffer as a result of that, and Mika rounded on him furiously, splashing him with the ale that spilled out of his mug.

"_What?_" the younger of the two roared, and a few heads turned from around the room to quietly observe the conflict. Mika and Arrow were a feared pair, understandably – both noble and of high-standing, but with the capability to fight viciously The sheer size of the two men was another threatening factor, along with their undying loyalty to each other – if you crossed Mika, you crossed Arrow, and vice-versa. There were very few vampires in the Mountain who desired starting a conflict with them – apart from the ones who wanted to lose a limb or two. Younger vampires watched their exchange of cross words in barely-concealed terror, ready to run if any of the fury was turned on them. "_Have you told her?_"

Arrow held up his hands. He might have been older and he might have been a good physical match for Mika, but he didn't fancy his chances against his brother when he was this inebriated and this angry. "No, I didn't tell her anything," he blurted quickly, but Mika carried on staring at him, unblinking, wanting answers and wanting them _now_. "It makes me feel awful to see you so unhappy," Arrow explained carefully. "And it's all about _her_. I'm sure she's a lovely girl, Mika, but it's time for this to end. I just gave her a couple of things to think about."

"_Gave her a couple of things to think about?_" Mika hissed. "_Did you threaten her? Charna's Guts, Arrow, if I find out you've threatened my assistant, I swear I'll –"_

"She isn't your assistant anymore," Arrow pointed out in a decidedly unhelpful manner, not afraid of Mika. "And besides that, of course I didn't threaten her. What could I _possibly_ have said? Fall for Mika now or I'll have you killed? That's _really_ got some justice behind it."

Mika wasn't in the mood for joking around. "Well, what then?" he asked angrily, returning to his ale for a brief few seconds. "I told you I didn't want her to know."

"And, for that reason, you know I won't tell her," Arrow agreed. "I just tried to push her along a little. Get her to figure it out on her own. Told her that you were very upset about the whole fall out and all the rest of it and asked her why she thought it might be that the distance between the two of you had affected you so immensely. She didn't get it anyway; I could see it in her eyes."

Mika sniffed disapprovingly. "You don't speak of her like you like her much," he said. Arrow looked away. Mika was right about that, of course – but how could he be expected to think fondly of her? She was stubborn, almost as stubborn as Mika was, and often just from knowing the situation with Mika, Arrow found her unbearable. He had trained her because he had been asked to; he was not fond of her. It was a childish reason to dislike her, but Mika shouldn't have been in so much pain over a woman, and whether or not she had caused it, Arrow blamed her for it.

"She's caused you an unbelievable amount of pain," he said tactfully, rather than point out that she was an arrogant little slip of a girl who simply irritated him. He hardly thought Mika, who idolised her so obviously, would appreciate harsh words about her.

"I've caused it all myself," Mika responded, and then, on that miserable note, reached out to refill his mug.

Arrow sighed impatiently, and couldn't really disagree with that. "Do you remember when you fell in love with that girl in London," Arrow said, the hint of a smile creeping onto his lips. "And how you moped around after we had left for months, as though the whole affair with her had really been going anywhere?"

"I really don't see the point of bringing that up," Mika said, though it was clear he did indeed remember it well. "I also remember that you teased me mercilessly about it, and that hardly helped my recovery."

The two had a long history. Though Arrow was several decades older, he had been blooded younger, and the two had therefore always felt and looked a similar age. Both Paris Skyle's assistants, they had been forced to spend every waking moment together from the moment Mika had become a half-vampire onwards. He and Arrow had fast become allies, and from that had been friends, and eventually had been closer than brothers. Very little ever escaped Paris Skyle, and certainly his perceptiveness could never be underestimated, and so perhaps in selecting Mika as his second assistant he had already known that the two would bond. Mika had fond memories now, though, of disliking the thick-set, older assistant intensely for the first few months after his blooding. He had been a brooding, angry sort – from a wealthy background, unusually for those who become vampires, but troubled by events of his childhood he had never quite forgotten, and determined to leave behind a society that wouldn't have batted an eyelid at the murder of his mother. She hadn't been the one with the money, after all, and for that reason nobody had cared much about her existence at all. Mika, as a human, had always watched the people who considered him a friend and who he considered acquaintances and wondered how many of them might have given him the time of day were it not for inheritance. The answer, of course, had been none. Mika, always dissatisfied by society and its fickle nature, had been all too eager to escape. Arrow had not understood that. The elder had been born into the opposite circumstances, and had often teased Mika while he adjusted to his new life of travelling with Paris. _How are you getting along without your brandy and your expensive cigars?_ Mika remembered him sneering. _How will you be a fighter when you have never fought for anything?_ Arrow had teased him like that again over his girl in London, Victoria or Elizabeth or some other quintessentially English name along those lines. It had been one of the only things that Mika had truly disliked about him.

"Do you not think, though," Arrow said hesitantly. "That if you had left Arra where you found her, she would have become as distant and as unimportant to you as your Valerie?"

"I think her name was Victoria. And obviously, yes," Mika snarled impatiently, tired of Arrow's games. "But that isn't the point. I couldn't have left her when I knew I could help her."

Arrow sighed. "I just think it's a shame for you to be so unhappy," he said. "I don't know how she feels about you, but she's not torn up over you like this, is she?"

Mika didn't look exactly pleased to hear that. He honestly didn't think Arrow had ever really been in love. He saw everything in such black and white terms, classified things as wrong and right with such unfailing ease that he could never really seem to understand the complexity of emotions involved. He saw Arra as just another girl like Victoria – someone Mika had thought he loved before he was sure he knew what love really was. There was no real point in explaining to Arrow that it didn't really matter whether Arra was agonizing over him, that the fact that she wasn't was irrelevant to how he felt about her, that there was no way he could see of just forgetting about her. He would never have understood. Mika thought for a second that he hoped one day Arrow would understand what it felt like to really love someone else, but then decided that he shouldn't wish pain like this on his closest friend, and hoped Arrow would be lucky enough to keep his head and heart black and white forever.

* * *

><p>Larten had tried valiantly not to make a fuss when Arra had joined the group of them later in the evening, but his attempts at subtlety had been so poor that Gavner had needed to stop himself from laughing every time he stole a glance at her and adjusted his tie, among other ridiculous activities. Admittedly, Arra had managed somehow to look really rather resplendent in the abomination of a dress Crepsley had given her – Gavner had never considered himself fashion conscious, but even he drew the line at those cheap lace sleeves – and, admittedly, she had turned a few heads, but Larten's reaction had been something else entirely from the wolf-whistles and catcalls of some of the other male vampires. Usually so composed, Gavner had been amused to see him crumble completely into a stuttering, awkward teenager, saying nothing and blushing embarrassingly. Kurda, a little younger than Arra and a little older than Gavner, had looked at Larten – by far the oldest and best respected of the group of youngsters – like he had two heads after his unexpected change of behaviour.<p>

"You look lovely, Arra," Gavner commented easily, having watched Larten fluff his way around the simple compliment for a couple of arduous minutes. Gavner chuckled inwardly to think that Vancha March had called Crepsley a "womanizer". _If that's a womanizer, I'm Don Juan, _he thought to himself with a cheeky grin, but, eager not to lose any of his teeth that night, he kept the sentiment to himself.

"Thank you, Gavner," she responded, pointedly ignoring Kurda, who since his arrival, she had always disliked. The two had merely gotten off to a bad start exasperated by Mika's dislike of Kurda's mentor, an ageing vampire named Bruman who had never quite fitted in with the rest of the pack – he had resigned from being a General after only a few years, and his radical, risk-taking ways had made him very unpopular with some. For a vampire as traditionally minded as Mika, who lived and died for the good of the clan, the dislike had been a matter of course. It hadn't helped, after that, when Arra had spoken badly of Kurda's "vapid" personality, or when Kurda had picked holes in Mika's attitude to warfare in front of his assistant – whatever the problems between the two, Arra was fiercely loyal by nature, and had not taken kindly to being forced to listen to her mentor being spoken badly of by such an "ignorant child". Kurda had taken an instant dislike to her way of speaking and her way of holding herself, as she had done with him – he considered her arrogant, which perhaps she was, and she considered him a weakling. The two hadn't really spoken since their cross words over Mika, but Gavner supposed a healthy amount of wine might be enough to put them back on track; he was fond of them both, and hated animosity in any form. Kurda, before Gavner had even been able to administer the wine, had approached the situation gracefully.

"I agree," he said with as charming a smile as he could manage. Kurda had what the vampires might have described as _human _good-looks, with his thin face and blue eyes, but he wasn't one to use them to his advantage much. "It really makes a difference to see you looking nice."

There was an uncomfortable beat of silence, Gavner pouring wine into goblets frantically, before Kurda recognized the double-edged sword of a compliment he had dealt her. He flushed brightly, brushing back his blonde locks in embarrassment; genuinely sorry for the way it had backfired. He stumbled over the words for an apology, battling Larten's glare all the while, but before he had much chance Arra laughed and rolled her eyes. Gavner knew her well enough to know that she wouldn't be affected by any comment on her appearance – she often seemed as though she would have been better off without any shred of attractiveness at all, if it helped in her quest for the other vampires to treat her with the respect she felt she deserved – but it was the fact that _Kurda_ had said it that would bother her, another slight at her from the young blonde.

"Thanks so much Kurda," she said sarcastically, the most typical of Arra responses. It was one thing Gavner certainly did not admire about her. Much like Mika, she wasn't inclined to offer anyone second chances, whether or not they deserved them, and she seemed to find it far easier to turn vicious than to deal with any situation in a level-headed manner. Her sarcasm seemed to come at least partly from Mika too, and that did not charm Gavner either – he much preferred it when people were out in the open about their true feelings, whether that led to some temporary unpleasantness, rather than disguising them behind a thin layer of superiority and scorn as she seemed to do. "It really means a lot, coming from _you_."

Defeated before he had even finished pouring, and coming to a gradual acceptance that Kurda and Arra might just never see eye to eye despite his best efforts, Gavner miserably downed the two goblets of wine and quietly cursed Kurda's social awkwardness.

Luckily, it seemed nobody was in the mood to argue about it. Kurda, as Gavner had already learned over the course of their friendship this Council, always seemed to have the absolute best of intentions and a talent for achieving the worst possible outcomes from them. He was kind-hearted certainly, and Gavner had only ever heard him speak badly of Arra out of any of the people they knew, but for someone so intelligent he seemed to always be somehow off the mark. He was a disaster waiting to happen, and Gavner didn't know how he had gone this long without a severe beating from another vampire, but Gavner liked him anyway despite the offence he constantly caused. Arra disappeared briefly, thankfully, to source a drink from somewhere, and in her absence Kurda rubbed his eyes wearily at his own actions.

"I'm not going to lie to you,"Gavner told the blonde, swinging a heavy arm over the slighter man's shoulders. "You haven't exactly got a talent with the ladies, Smahlt."

Larten let out a rusty chuckle at that, and briefly they all turned to watch a brawl breaking out at the other side of the Hall between several hilariously inebriated vampires. Gavner quirked an eyebrow at Larten's apparent amusement. "You aren't exactly one to talk either, Crepsley," he said. "I expected great things from you after all the stories I've been told, and all I've seen of the famous chauvinist so far is him hopelessly running around after Arra Sails!"

He half-expected a solid beating for that, especially when two drunken vampires behind them overheard and cheered loudly. Gavner was thick-set, packed with muscles and stocky, but Larten, however sinewy, was stronger, older and a better fighter, and nobody could have disputed it. Ironically, though, Larten had been too focused on watching Arra weave her way back through the bustling crowds towards them to hear. Gavner nudged Kurda and winked. The two were still chuckling about it when she sat back down and proceeded to take a long sip out of a metal flask she had brought back with her.

"Where did you find that?" Gavner asked, with a touch of envy. Vampires had a hard time becoming especially merry on the wine and ale provided at the Mountain, and whatever she had – whiskey or brandy or something along those lines – looked far more interesting.

Arra shrugged. "Prince Vancha gave it to me," she said, and Gavner gleefully watched out of the corner of his eye as Larten came remarkably close to having a brain aneurysm. "He said something about my Trials as he went past, so I suppose it might have been because of that."

Gavner stared at her a moment longer, expecting a smirk or something to tip him off that she wasn't serious about that assumption, but when she did nothing of the sort he let out a loud bark of laughter. Arra was so tough and so difficult at times – sharp-tongued, heavily guarded, proud and ambitious. Naïve did not seem to fit in well with the other characteristics he had observed in her.

"Mmm," Gavner said, still chuckling. "Perhaps it was that."

"Mmm," Kurda mimicked happily. "Have you ever spoken much to Prince Vancha, Arra?"

Arra cocked her head to the side in a mockery of puzzlement. "No?" she replied hesitantly, and then took another sip of whatever "Prince Vancha" had offered her. "Mika told me to maintain a bit of a distance from him on our way here. I'm not sure why though, he seems really really _nice_."

That was the final straw for Gavner, who doubled over with laughter, and even Kurda, who dissolved into fits with his head in his hands. Larten looked a little cross, and opened his mouth as if to say something about it all, but Arra placed a calm hand on his forearm.

"It's not their fault they're imbeciles," she said slyly. "And it's not their fault I'm not, either. Let them have this one."

She winked then, and took another swig from the flask. Larten realized that he should have known it – the Arra he knew would never have fallen for any trick Vancha March could have pulled, but certainly would have taken an immense amount of joy in feeling that she'd messed a bit with Kurda and Gavner. The fact that he had been willing to step in and chide them for her made him feel a little foolish – as if she wasn't able to fight her own battles! – and he resolved not to behave in the same way again. Naïve was no word for Arra at all, as incredibly innocent as she occasionally managed to look. A little light headed from the atmosphere and the alcohol, Larten didn't think he'd ever been as impressed by anything as he was by her little tricks or the way she looked in that dress, the creeping ivy green lace suddenly the perfect complement for the dusky cream of her skin, the bright cool eyes, the coal-black hair. He briefly wondered if anything in the entire world had ever been as –

"Stop staring at me," she said softly, interrupting his thoughts on how amazing and perfect she was. "I can see where Mika came up with _creepy Crepsley _all of a sudden."

So concerned still with how fantastic she was, Larten neither laughed nor took any offence to that.

"I think you are magnificent," he said breathlessly.

The rest of the table stared at each other silently, until Kurda coughed deliberately several moments later. Arra took an uncomfortably large gulp of whiskey in an attempt to dull the overwhelming feeling of awkwardness, and Gavner pushed forward rapidly with conversation, not-so-subtly kicking his orange-haired friend under the table.

"There's going to be a big fight on the bars later apparently," he said, scrambling for suitably neutral conversation topics. "Holmlund's going to take on Vanez. That's going to be pretty close-run if you ask me, although Holmlund's pretty hefty for the bars and I reckon Vanez probably does have a better chance of just toppling him off."

"You can really talk about hefty," Kurda murmured under his breath.

"Is that why everyone is heading out now?" Arra asked, glancing around at the rapidly disappearing vampires. Many of them were quickly finishing their drinks and then all heading over towards the tunnel leading to one of the larger Halls of Sport. Overhearing her, a vampire they did not recognize bent down over their table. "Vancha March is sword-fighting in one of the games halls," he said vaguely, clearly intoxicated. "And I don't know about you, but I think he'd be a lot more bearable missing a few fingers, or maybe a whole hand!"

The table laughed as the unfamiliar vampire sauntered away. It wasn't so much that Vancha was unpopular; rather that he often came across like he wouldn't have suffered much from being knocked down a peg or two, not that he ever particularly faced that. He had earned his right to become a Prince, and he was respected immensely, but, as many vampires would attest, he was mostly just an arrogant sod most of the time. He was an excellent fighter though, despite his easy-going nature, and though he fought often, he was very rarely injured. He had spoken before about disliking the vampires' reliance on their weapon, and even a desire to revert back to more traditional vampiric ways of fighting, but it seemed a shame when he had such a gift with a sword. Gavner stood.

"This I really don't want to miss," he said, then grinned at Arra. "Come on, you can give him back his –" he cut off as she took another unsettlingly large gulp. "—_empty_ flask. And whatever else he's expecting from you in return."

He and Kurda sniggered again at that, and Arra and Larten glanced at each other and simultaneously rolled their eyes, the four of them setting off in a similar direction to the wave of moving vampires.

* * *

><p>Hours later, the group of vampires declared the evening less-than-successful. Arra hadn't been challenged much and for once was thankful for it, though it had been a dull night for her because of it, and Kurda had twisted and dodged his way out of as many fights as usual, but Larten and Gavner were both nursing various injuries. Vancha March had escaped with all of his fingers intact, something with had bothered the group immensely, and they had vowed to drink away their sorrows over the boring fight. They had consumed so much alcohol by this point even by vampire standards that they were all vaguely tipsy, typically lightweight Kurda, and heads turned at the rowdy group as they stumbled at the back of the crowd watching one of the last fights of the evening.<p>

"Who is it?" Kurda asked, craning his neck to attempt to assess the identities of the vampires fighting. Gavner, a little shorter than Arra, didn't bother, and simply waited for the two taller men to figure it out. Larten was entirely and obviously unconcerned, having somehow encouraged Arra to pay an unreasonable amount of attention to the couple of cuts and bruises he'd sustained while fighting (only to impress her) earlier. Gavner watched her out of the corner of his eye as she kissed the bruises on his cheekbone and temple, ostensibly to "kiss them better", and reflected that she was far more fun after alcohol than before. He would have to remember to convince her into drinking every night – and he certainly didn't think, from the looks of his words in her ear and his hand drawing circles on her back, that Larten would be objecting much to that.

Kurda was still occupied with the fight, even when it was clear his three friends had lost interest. The crowd was growing noisier and noisier – the drunken foursome were no longer making any significant noise in comparison with all of the other vampires around them – and, though he could not see, Gavner began to gain an understanding of who might be involved from the names being mentioned around him. Kurda turned around, looking a little more sober, and a little more concerned.

"Mika?" Gavner asked, and his blonde friend nodded. "Against who?" the stockier man asked, struggling to hear that in the crowd. It didn't matter particularly; Mika was almost a Prince, and not without reason. He was qualified for the job in every sense, including physically. Gavner had rarely seen him lose a fight, and had never seen him lose one without holding on to his dignity.

"Vonn," Kurda replied, and snuck a glance at Larten and Arra, who were still too preoccupied with each other to have paid any attention to what was going on around them. Kurda frowned and lowered his voice. "It's bad," he told Gavner. "Mika's…not exactly on top form."

Gavner sniffed and pushed his way a little further into the crowd, to find a place he might be able to see a little more – followed closely all the while by Kurda, who had no desire to be left with the lovebirds. When he got closer to the centre, he almost gasped. Mika, so well-respected and so well known for his vicious fighting style, looked entirely on his last legs. He and his opponent were engaged in some obscure form of boxing, but in reality there was very little boxing being done. Mika was, for lack of a better word, _ruined _– covered almost entirely in blood, and struggling to climb back to his feet. Vonn, tired and a little bruised, had stopped looking triumphant and begun looking vaguely concerned. It took Gavner a few moments to realize, by the sway Mika experienced when he finally did manage to gain his footing again, that the soon-to-be Prince was intoxicated to the point, almost, of disability. It explained his magnificent loss, certainly, but did not make it any easier to watch. As Larten and Arra, hand in hand, rounded the corner to join them, Arrow came backwards through the crowd to meet them all.

Noticing the fight now that she could see it, Arra winced, and then turned her attention to Arrow. It was clear that she hadn't even _recognized _Mika in such a destroyed state, or at least hadn't until Arrow grabbed her shoulder. It was, fortunately, the shoulder that hadn't been run through yesterday with ice, and she wrongly interpreted it as a friendly gesture.

"Do you see what you're doing to him?" Arrow asked, and though he did not sound angry, there was no warmth in his eyes at all towards her. His lip almost curled at her. Though she did not like him much, Arrow's sharp change from indifference towards her to this new cold disgust shocked her a little, and she stepped back reflexively into Larten. "Why won't you put him out of his misery? Look at him!"

Frustrated by the blank look she delivered him, Arrow pointed towards the pair of fighting vampires. "Do you see just how much he cares about you now?" he said over the noise of the crowd, almost glaring at her. Arrow was not a vicious man, he did not have malice in his nature, but his concern for Mika surviving the night outweighed his concern over whether Arra would think him rude tomorrow night. "He's almost killing himself over you, _is it bothering you yet?_"

Looking up again at the platform, Arra threw a hand over her mouth. "Is that Mika?" she cried, but Arrow had been too frustrated with her to stay much longer and had slipped further to the back of the crowd. Larten had nodded solemnly when she asked again, and without warning she set off ahead of them all, choked with the idea that any of the blood he was drenched in was his own, or that any of the blood he'd shed was over her.

She snuck through the crowd under arms and in tiny gaps – the others would not be able to follow her – until she could lay a hand on the platform and see her mentor properly. Vonn was barely fighting – she noticed the vampire supervising the game attempt to call an end to it, but then noticed Mika shake his head vehemently, determined as ever to hold onto his pride. The black haired General took a few heavy-handed, badly aimed shots while Vonn easily dodged, eventually delivering him a punch to the jaw that sent him crashing to his knees again.

She tried to hold her tongue, and before now she had thought herself angry enough with Mika that seeing him degraded like this would have pleased her. But Arra wasn't heartless, and she certainly didn't want the man who had looked after her and helped her so much for the majority of her life injured so badly, let alone humiliated in front of his peers.

"Mika!" she shouted, and then cleared her throat and shouted again, louder. "_Mika!_"

Even in his drunken haze, it was clear he had recognized the voice. He looked the wrong way at first, and then up, as though the words might have come from his own imagination, and then finally looked her straight in the eye.

"What are you _doing?_" she called. "Look at yourself!"

Perhaps thinking it an insult, Mika hung his head, and began the struggle of getting back up. Calling his name again, Arra waved to get his attention back. "Please call this off," she begged, ignoring the couple of vampires around her who booed her for that comment. Mika wasn't always entirely popular with others – particularly others who had fallen victim to his aggressive style of limb-breaking before – and so it was hardly surprising that at least a few vampires were delighted to see him brought to his knees. "I'm sorry if I've upset you, just don't fight anymore tonight!"

Mika listened to her, and then shook his head.

"There's no shame in quitting now!" she said. "You're too hurt to carry on! Come back and finish the job tomorrow!"

Shaking his head again, Mika finally clambered to his feet. He shuffled unsteadily for a second, then turned to look at his assistant. She had underestimated his injuries even when she'd last looked at him. One of his eyes was swollen to the extent of it being permanently shut, and his nose looked broken, his lip cut and big.

"That's enough," she shouted. Her mind raced with things to say to him to call him away from the fight. She disliked herself then, immensely – for anyone else, she would have labelled it their decision, and left them to it. When she had first laid eyes on the fight it had looked unpleasant, but she had not been concerned about it and she had not cared, allowing the vampire, whoever he was, to fight until he killed himself if he wished. That was the vampire way, after all. Suddenly she saw a little bit, if only the very littlest bit, of Mika reflected back in herself – although it wasn't the same, and she had prepared for the Trials for so long and deserved the opportunity to prove herself, if watching her undertake each one was as painful to him and watching him nearly self-destruct over a pointless boxing match, then perhaps she finally understood him a little better. "_Please_ Mika. That's enough."

Just when it looked like he might have been inclined to listen to her, she felt Larten's hand on her back as he caught up with her finally, and saw the flash of something – betrayal, or hurt – in Mika's eyes as he turned back to the fight.

"It is up to him," Larten told her as she called and called to get his attention as he struggled away in another pointless match. "Arra, it is his choice if he wishes to fight! Leave him!"

It was a reflection of her own philosophy, and she knew that was the right thing to do – like it was her choice to train with Larten and have him injure her every night, cracked bones through to sprained muscles; it was Mika's choice to enter into this stupid, doomed fight with a better, sober opponent. But she couldn't remain objective about it all when she watched him try to fight again – it was not all as black and white as she had thought.

"Look at him!" she cried. "He's killing himself! And you think we should_ leave him?_"

Before Larten could answer her, or even begin to suggest that she was hypocritical at all, the vampire supervising the games finally stepped in, against Mika's wishes, to call an end to the fight. Though some vampires jeered at that, and Mika kicked up a fuss, most of the crowd was thankful, and began celebrating Aksel's victory.

Wasting no time, and ignoring the pain in her leg, Arra climbed up onto the platform to retrieve her wrecked mentor. "Mika," she said softly, a hand on his neck and a hand on his shoulder, keeping him awake, keeping him upright. He was breathing heavily, and he suddenly looked so overwhelmingly sad that she could barely believe it was him that she was seeing so vulnerable. "Why did you have to do that?" she asked. "What were you trying to prove? You're so hurt, and for what?"

He didn't look ready to answer, and even if he had been, Larten had scurried up behind her again, and the minute Mika noticed him he collected himself, straightening up as well as he could and turning away from her, swatting away her caring hands. Though she tried to grasp his shoulder, then his arm and then his hand, each time he swatted her away, and eventually Arrow offered him assistance down from the platform. Worried, rejected and vaguely guilty, Arra shrugged Larten's hand off her back and watched her mentor stumble away, looking exceptionally injured and worryingly broken.


	6. Chapter 6

**The Hardest of Hearts VI**

_I forgot to mention at some point that the title of this fic comes from the song "The Hardest of Hearts" by Florence + the Machine. And thank you for the loooovely feedback on the last chapter; I hope this one is as enjoyable!_

Mika awoke with the distinct feeling that he had done something very badly wrong, but, frustratingly, with no concept whatsoever of what it might be. He lay still a long time, hoping for more than just unconnected shreds of his evening to pop back into his mind. He had a recollection of a conversation with Arrow, and a feeling that it had not ended on good terms, and a worrying snippet of Arra's worried eyes and the sound of her calling his name. No, this was not good at _all_. Eventually deciding to attempt to rise out of his coffin, he first ran a hand over his eyes, only to be rewarded with a sharp shock of pain.

_Ah_, he thought miserably, _bad night_.

Vampire Mountain was not much for mirrors – the masses of unwashed vampires did not care to examine their appearances particularly regularly – and Mika could not stomach the thought of finding a blade to examine himself in if it meant leaving his cell. Braving it, he grazed his fingertips gently over his features – the longer he was awake, the more noticeable and unbearable the pain was becoming – finding that, displeasingly, absolutely everything was painful. He caught sight of large, dark bruises spreading over his knuckles and his bicep, and absently wondered who he had fought to put him in such a state, praying to the Vampire Gods it was someone vaguely respectable (and _please, please not Larten Crepsley_).

As he contemplated the night before the carnage that was this morning, someone at his doorway cleared their throat.

"You're looking…" said Arra, wrinkling her nose. "Exactly as I thought you would be."

Seeing her gave him another terrible feeling of that overpowering guilt. He tried desperately again to think of anything he might have done, but, coming up blank, simply let out a hopeless groan. Hoping she was not here to argue with him in his current state, he faced her desperately, hoping that their arguments over the past nights might be forgotten over a discussion of the drunken fool he'd made of himself.

"Did I…" he cut off, clearing his dry throat. "Did I do anything absolutely mortifying? Be honest."

She cast her eyes towards the floor in embarrassment for him and he groaned again, louder. "You fought incredibly foolishly," she said, dodging the question a little. "I'm surprised you're on your feet, actually. You just wouldn't _stop_, however I pleaded with you."

"I'm sorry," he said grimly. "Alcohol and I have never gotten along brilliantly. You know that, of anyone."

She had seen nights like these before. He thought back to the night he'd broken both legs of a man trying to come on to her outside a tavern in Germany, or the night he'd got them chased out of town somewhere in Austria for showing off his inhuman strength and speed at a hotel bar, to impress her more than to impress the humans. _I'm always getting you into trouble_, she had laughed, years ago when they had been close enough for that, and little had she known just how much trouble she was getting him into.

She smiled at the floor, seemingly at the same memories. She was silent a minute, then; "You were upset, too."

He tensed a little at the very idea – how absolutely humiliating, what had he been thinking? "Nobody else would have been able to tell," she reassured him, reading his concerns instantly. "But I could see it when you were just speaking to me. When you felt like we were on our own."

"Sorry," he said again. "I don't know what came over me."

She hummed thoughtfully, and crossed the room to sit on the edge of his coffin, stretching her injured leg out in front of her, resting it. "Arrow seemed to think you'd had a tough night," she told him. "He was exceptionally worried about you. He seemed to think it might have been somehow _me _that you were so distressed over."

Mika's heart thundered in his ears. He forced himself to scoff, but his mind was racing. He vowed silently to kill Arrow slowly and painfully if he had told her a_nything. _Why did he seem to find it so utterly impossible to just keep his nose out of this, when it clearly did not concern him? Mika regretted telling him anything about it. "Really?" he asked calmly, outwardly unperturbed. "It wasn't you, of course. We've had our moments, but you never cause me any trouble. I don't know what made him think that."

There was a long silence. Mika was half-tempted just to tell her, wreck it all forever but at least end the constant ambiguity that exhausted him. It had always been too complicated between them for any recognition of feelings to be expressed – whether he was brother, father, friend or teacher, he knew he wasn't _lover _– and he dreaded any way he might compromise the fragile trust they had carefully constructed. He loved her, of course, as he always had. But having her halfway was better than losing her altogether, and the concept of how his feelings might affect her had always forced him into hiding. It wasn't cowardice, for Mika was certainly no coward, it was more concern. He selfishly wished sometimes that he had not known anything about her human life – perhaps, not knowing her past, he wouldn't have been consumed with worry about repeating the same patterns of male behaviour that she would recognize and despise. It was more than what she would assume, the way he felt about her – it was nothing as trivial as sexuality, and it certainly wasn't any desire to control or cage her, but how would she know the difference between him and other men? She was too damaged already, and no matter how difficult it was for him, he would do anything to spare her another betrayal. In that sense, even if she couldn't see it, he cared more for her than he did for himself. Larten Crepsley had never entertained such concerns; he would not have cared, probably, and it made Mika's blood boil just to think that one day he would hurt her and never fully realize the extent of the damage he was doing. It was only a matter of time.

"What else was it about, then?" she asked knowingly, glancing up at him with one eyebrow cocked. When he did not respond, she sighed. "I'm sorry; I never realized how badly us fighting a little would have bothered you. I forgive you, if it eases your mind any. You know I'll always forgive you."

Her last words touched him, and his heart jumped into his throat inconveniently before he could find the words to tell her how much that had meant to him.

"I still remember the night I met you," she said, holding his gaze as he floundered for words, as though searching for something in his expression. "I haven't forgotten everything you did for me, Mika. I _am _sorry if I am not always as grateful as I ought to be. I suppose sometimes in my ingratitude it slips my mind how much I owe to you."

It was too clear that she had stayed up almost all day thinking this over; the change in her attitude towards him was so tangible. He had met her halfway through her attempt at escape. He had not known what she was running from at the time, but it had been clear to him that she never stopped running from whatever it was, and the constant need to find her escape route was exhausting her. Though she had seemed strong even then, from the steely, untrusting way she had regarded him, she had been physically utterly run-down – skinny, cold, unwell – but her determination had kept her going far past the point of exhaustion. Though it was years after that, the first time she told him anything about her mother and her father, she had told him everything he needed to know the first second he laid eyes on her. She had lied to him for days about her identity, which over the years he'd grown to find amusing, but once he had gotten to the bottom of that and realized the ease with which she had lied about it, surely the sign of a professional, he had been oddly fascinated by her. He had followed her out one night, when she had finally consented to allowing him to stay in the same building (though she had relegated him to the upstairs and locked the connecting door when she slept, hardly a sign of trust). He had been unable to help himself – it was long past midnight and she was human. He'd followed her for hours while she walked, very swiftly for a girl going nowhere, and after an hour of this he realized she had no idea where she was going at all – she was still running from something deep down all the time, and she couldn't let it catch her while she slept. It was one of the saddest displays he'd ever witnessed.

He'd followed her an hour still after that, as she circled the centre of the town and made to turn back towards home – she was so young in the dark, overwhelmed by the size of her own coat, and he hadn't been able to bear to leave her once he'd started watching, though he knew she wouldn't have liked him to interfere. As she made her way back towards the end of the long road the two of them now lived on, him trailing silently behind her, keeping a reasonable distance but a hawk-like watch on her at all times, an unidentified arm had grabbed her from behind the edge of another building. Mika had jumped himself, startled, his heart thundering in his ears, but even as the stranger pressed the knife against her throat and pressed her back against the wall, she hadn't screamed or struggled at all. It was almost as if she simply didn't care – no fight left in her to run from petty city tramps when she was so tired from running from something that clearly scared her far more. She had sighed – her breath had stood out in the cold air – allowing the stranger to trap her wrists above her head. Then she shut her eyes hopelessly, and laid her head back against the wall, resigned entirely to anything she might have been about to face.

That truly was the saddest display Mika had ever seen.

Of course, he hadn't allowed it to go on. Mika had saved her then, and he liked to think he had saved her a little bit every night since. She didn't walk with her head down anymore; now she was proud, as she always ought to have been. She liked to think he had given her a second chance at life, mentored her for twenty years entirely selflessly – how could he ever tell her otherwise, if it shook her belief in the only good thing that had ever happened to her?

"I am sorry for everything lately," he confessed. "You do not need to be grateful any more for what I did or did not manage to do for you when you were younger; that was years ago, and I know you have not forgotten. Nothing in our history excuses that I have behaved wrongly towards you, lately more than ever."

This was easily the closest they had come in years to the way they used to be, to the _real_ them. He sighed, and sat down next to her. She folded her hands in her lap. "Arrow has confused me a lot," she admitted, though she hated the idea of admitting to anything of the sort. This was the Mika she recognized, and so she did not hesitate in being honest. He held his breath in anticipation of what Arrow had said exactly, but then she seemed to think a little better of voicing it, and simply turned her eyes up towards his. "I do care a lot about you Mika," she said carefully, holding his eyes. "You do know that?"

He cleared his throat uncomfortably, hoping this _wasn't _heading where it seemed like it might be. "Of course, Arra," he said, smiling tightly.

"And you do know," she said, still staring back at him as though holding eye contact was integral to their discussion. He had the feeling, as he had since she'd entered his cell, that she was searching for something from him. "That nothing I have done, lately or ever, has been a reflection of my caring less about you. I did not take the Trials because I did not care about your opinion – I did listen to you, but I needed to prove myself. I know you did not agree, but I hoped you would understand. It was not that I didn't value your opinion."

"I know," he repeated, nodding vigorously as though that would end their conversation faster. In reality, he didn't believe her at all – he had always felt that she had taken the Trials as a move for independence. He felt that it was exactly that she did not value his opinion anymore that had allowed her to take them – when she was younger he knew she would never have willingly disobeyed him. He could not say this to her, though, when he felt so much like she was interrogating him.

"And you do know," she persisted. "That however much we disagree, I will always care as I always have about you. We'll always be the same as we always were."

He wondered if he felt the hint in her words or whether it was his own paranoia. She was still staring at him, gauging his every _blink _it seemed, and he couldn't decide if this was just a bizarrely intense way of letting him know that she still respected him and wanted him to have a position in her life or whether this was as close as she could come to letting him know that there would never be anything between them than there ever had been.

He chose to go for the first option and nodded, smiling softly.

"Thank you," he said genuinely, and he saw her visibly relax. He felt uncomfortably predatory, as though through his actions he was leading her further into a false sense of security – but perhaps she hadn't meant to say anything about his feelings for her at all, he convinced himself, and perhaps she wasn't even sure how she felt about him yet. He continued the act mercilessly, taking her hand and giving her his most sincere look through his swollen eyelid. He felt very manipulative all of a sudden, but maybe she just needed a little more time and a little more convincing to realize that he was really the only one for her. "You have _no idea_ how much that means to me."

* * *

><p>"I spoke to Mika," Arra told Larten that night cheerfully. She had almost begged him (though of course she would never have stooped to such a low) to train her during the Festival as her injuries healed, intolerant of his reservations that it might seriously slow her healing process. Of course he had not been able to refuse her, though he looked wary as she stretched and checked that her hands were properly bandaged. "He's ridiculously bruised, but I think he's alright. And I think we are alright, too. Arrow was far too dramatic."<p>

Larten nodded silently, inwardly wondering how Mika had convinced her of that. This naivety in Arra surprised him – she was so sceptical sometimes that it was really a miracle that she had never seriously considered the obvious motivation behind everything Mika did about anything involving her. It was dazzling clear to Larten now, more so even than before, exactly what the problem was between Mika and his former assistant. He had always thought so of course, but he had never really wanted to admit it - but watching Mika nearly destroy himself in misery over her had been a final piece of the puzzle. Arrow really had not been being dramatic. The situation between Mika and Arra was far more critical than Larten had ever realized, and he regretted some of his actions somewhat now that he knew the full extent of Mika's feelings towards her – had it been wise to bait him that evening in the medical wing before her third Trial? "If you think so," he said, and stood to begin the fight.

Before she stepped up onto the mat with him she paused. "If I _think_ so?" she asked, a little irritated.

Larten struggled with himself for a moment and then sighed. "I just mean…" he searched vaguely for the words and came up with nothing, eventually shrugging. "It is not important. I am sure you have sorted everything out."

Typically, Arra was not naïve when he would have liked her to be. "You look uncomfortable whenever I mention Mika," she said, eyes narrowed. "You certainly don't think I've sorted things out with him. Do you?"

Larten struggled with himself again and make an awkward sound in the back of his throat, wishing the conversation over. "Well, no," he answered after a moment's pause. "I cannot say I do, to be honest. You and Mika have far too many things left unsaid between you for one conversation early this evening to have fixed your relationship entirely."

She frowned. She looked down and cleared her throat before she shook her head. "You don't know anything about Mika and I," she said, annoyed with his attempt to involve himself in something he clearly had no understanding of. It was clear that he and Mika would never get along, and she understood that, but it infuriated her that Larten felt he had any sort of understanding of her and Mika's relationship. She had spent probably too much time thinking it over, and had convinced herself eventually that regardless of his faults, she owed everything she had to Mika. She had been becoming ungrateful, and she hated herself now for the way she had spoken to him at sunset before the Maze of Blades, and the way she had been avoiding and ignoring him, punishing him for merely wanting to protect her. However much she _liked _Larten, and it sounded so petty to her when she thought about it like that, he could never compete with how much Mika had done for her, or even fully understand it. "I'd rather not hear your opinion on it again."

Larten raised his eyebrows in mild shock at her tone. "I am sorry, Arra," he said, tone clipped. He dropped his hands, not ready to fight her in the middle of a disagreement. "But it is not as though I am not involved in the situation between you and Mika. I have become embroiled entirely in your odd dynamic."

"Don't call it odd," she berated him. "You make it sound like a problem."

Angry with her finally, Larten threw his hands up. "How can it not be a problem?" he asked her crossly, wanting desperately for her to see what was right in front of her. "Everything between the two of you is a problem. Mika cannot happily let you make any of your own decisions. His control over you is ridiculous – have you realized he is no longer your mentor, or has that escaped you entirely?" After that he laughed, and shook his head, sighing. "But of course, you have. The truth is, you would not want him to allow you your independence any more than he would like to truly grant it."

She stepped back off the mats entirely, storming away towards the benches. The very implication of her naivety made her want to break his arms. "What _you _can't seem to grasp," she said, punctuating every word with an injection of venom. "Is that it's not a _problem_ that Mika cares about me. I understand why he found it difficult to allow me to take the Trials now, if it feels anything like watching him fight a drunken losing battle against Aksel Vonn."

Larten let out a bark of humourless laughter. "Maybe that is it," he said, half to her and half to himself. "Mika is only half of the problem."

"There _isn't _a –"

"_He's in love with you_," Larten said bluntly, finished with the games. Arra froze, but he just scowled back at her. "And there is no point in looking at me like you had no idea, because it could not have been made any more _abundantly_ clear. Arrow practically spelled it out for you! Whether you were choosing to ignore it, or choosing to allow it, the truth is you have known it all along." He tried to take a deep breath, and forced himself to avoid looking at her directly. Her shocked expression was irritating – she _had _known, surely, she wasn't stupid by any means – and he couldn't stand to watch her pretend to take it all in as though she was actually even relatively surprised by the revelation. "And the more I listen to you – and the way you reacted to Mika's pathetic self-destruction – the more I think you feel exactly the same way about him, you are just too stubborn to admit it. And how should I feel about that? I feel more sympathy than ever with Mika, to be honest. You have treated us both horribly. I hope watching us become enemies over you has been amusing for you, because it does not seem to have amused Mika and I."

After several beats of silence he finally did look back at her, but she had turned her back towards the benches.

"You've got it wrong," she said quietly. "I'll ask him."

"No, Arra," he said wearily. She was a little too still, facing away from him and absently picking up the few things she had brought with her, moving too slowly as though she was considering something. He felt bad for having been so harsh to her, but he felt so terrible in general that he could hardly help it – he'd foolishly allowed himself to fall for her and believed it fully, that she could feasibly feel the same way, and he had never quite realized that she would never be able to leave Mika, so attached she was to him. Too attached for it to have been as platonic as he'd been led to believe. He felt terribly used and hurt and awful, and he resented her for the whole situation – but he couldn't help worrying a little when she sat down, still with her back towards him. "You can ask him if you want. But you know I have not got it wrong. You know I am right."

She said nothing. He despised himself for it, but he couldn't allow her to be upset because of him. Sighing, he crossed the room to place a hand on her shoulder.

"Arra," he said, sitting down beside her. "I am sorry. I was too harsh."

She looked back at him with very distrustful eyes. "Do you really think all of that?" she asked, frowning.

It was a very odd question to field after an argument. "Well, yes," he replied awkwardly, wondering in what way it had been necessary to confirm that. Did she think this was a joke of some kind? "Of course I do. I did not say it to upset you."

She straightened her back and sniffed – not sadly, but with some sort of clinical disgust. The walls were coming up around her, and suddenly he felt everything he'd worked for with Arra, so guarded and stubborn, slipping away again. "You have _not _upset me," she said arrogantly. "Though it amuses me that you flatter yourself to think you could."

She gathered herself to her feet, though she didn't look like she was about to leave. Larten got the distinct impression she just wanted to be above him to assert even physically her moral high ground.

"Quite frankly," she spat down at him. "I'm appalled with the way you seem to think of me. If you are indeed right about Mika's feelings for me, it disgusts me that you think I've somehow enjoyed watching him torment himself –" she paused again, and as he watched her he could see her putting the pieces together in her mind. It was the first moment he felt a pang of worry that he might have been wrong in some of his assertions. "- _and_ that you think that I've enjoyed pitting the two of you against each other for some sort of perverse amusement. I would have thought you of all people might have known me better than to think like that."

"You've led me on," Larten tried again, desperately, although he felt like his whole argument was slipping out from under him. "It's been Mika you truly wanted all along."

She grabbed her jumper and her gauze and her cream for the worst of her bruises from beside him on the bench. "Don't be so _pathetic_," she said harshly, and then held her arms out in a gesture of weariness with the entire discussion and situation. "Why would I have done that?" she asked, looking him square in the face, making sure not to avoid his eyes. "In case you haven't noticed, I've been trying not to die in my Trials of Initiation. I haven't had time to be playing games with Mika's feelings, or yours for that matter."

With that, she turned away and slipped on her shoes. She was already wondering how this had happened to her at all – how was she engaging in this ridiculous spat with this man she barely knew, in the grand scheme of things, and what purpose did it serve? It all seemed so insignificant to her suddenly – what Larten clearly felt for her, whether Mika felt anything for her at all – in comparison to the life she wanted to carve for herself. Briefly she was angry that she had allowed herself to be sucked in to anything as pathetic as romance, but then she just wanted to _focus_ again. It was as if a mist had cleared – she had work to do, and plenty of it, before sunset.

"In fact, I haven't got the time for either of you," she continued. "I am dedicated to my training, not to you two. If you see Vanez please tell him I need to speak with him regarding furthering my training. I have another two Trials left and I can't help but feel I'd be trained better by someone who doesn't harbour animosity like yours towards me – it seems I won't be able to trust Arrow or Mika for that now, either."

Rendered entirely speechless by guilt and paralysing fear of her never wanting to see him again, Larten rushed after her as she headed out, but she faced forwards stubbornly and delicately plucked his hand away from her arm when he reached out to touch her. "Go away," she said coolly. Mika would have been proud of her composure. "I am going to train in another Hall by myself. I do not need your help anymore." She looked him up and down and pursed her lips. "In fact, I think I'd be better off without."

"I'm sorry," he said hopelessly, but she was already walking away.


	7. Chapter 7

the hardest of hearts VII

I read all of the larten crepsley saga books over the past couple of days. wow this is so not canon anymore. oh well! thanks so much for all reviews

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><p>"The Lion's Den," Prince Vancha repeated happily. Arra pointedly did not allow herself to smile, but she was delighted with the choice – she almost felt as though she were cheating, a little, by drawing an infamously easier Trial than many of the others. Still, she supposed her others hadn't been as simple, and so she did not feel as though this would negate her success at all. Those gathered to witness the drawing looked either bored by the prospect of a Trial she could easily pass or happy for her – and she felt better this time, now that she stood to draw her Trial completely alone. She had not seen Arrow since the first night of the Festival and he had not appeared to stand beside her. She had asked Vanez to stand down. She was no longer in need of a chaperone. "May the luck of the vampires be with you, Arra Sails," he continued, but he already had a look in his eyes that told her she had passed.<p>

Arra tried her best not to look around. She had kept out of her cell in various ways since her argument with Larten, not wanting to face either him or Mika before her Trials came to an end – she had even slept in Gavner's cell, much to the young vampire's amusing shock and horror when he had woken up to find her anywhere near him. It was almost an epiphany, the way she had come to the realization of how little she needed either of them and their emotional trauma. As ashamed as she was of the way she had behaved – she was a _vampiress_, after all, not a silly teenage girl – she felt she could redeem herself a little, even if only to herself, if she could manage to get to the end of her Trials without any more emotional interference. However much she wanted to keep her eyes ahead, she noticed Mika instantly, as near to the thrones as he stood, and she could see Larten from a mile off as ever, with his ridiculously bright hair. Still, she avoided meeting their eyes for too long, and set her jaw as she stepped down from the platform to face her Trial.

"You couldn't have been luckier, really," Vanez told her excitedly as she walked beside him to the entrance of the Trial. The Lion's Den wasn't an especially difficult Trial if you could be trusted to tread carefully – she had seen others undertake the Trial and escape entirely unscathed. However, Vanez was living proof that even the stealthiest vampires had been caught out. Still, he looked so delighted that she felt a little twinge of warmth for him. She had never bonded with Vanez particularly, mainly due to Mika's interference and her resentment of that, but he was so clearly kind that she couldn't help liking him. Uncharacteristically, he swept in and enveloped her in a surprise hug. "You're in the clear," he said into her ear. "As long as you don't make any huge mistakes." Then he pulled back to look at her and smiled warmly. "But look who I'm talking to," he said, oddly proud. "You don't seem to be one for making many mistakes, Arra Sails."

She felt a little awkward staring back at Vanez while he attempted to fill her with confidence when she could see clearly the price _he _paid for a tussle with a lion. "I hope you're right," she said, careful as she always was not to be too chummy. "Although I haven't made it yet, Vanez. Save the celebration for later?"

The older vampire grinned at her, then ran a hand over the back of his neck in embarrassment. "I know," he said. "I'm sorry." But then he was smiling at her again, and he reached out both hands to hold one of hers. "I mean this in the best possible way," he said softly, perhaps not wanting the vampires passing them to reach the benches to hear them. "But everybody was kind of _indoctrinated _not to have too much faith in you from the start. It's so wonderful you've come through it. I know it wasn't all my doing, but I'm proud of you all the same."

She had almost laughed at his comment about their lack of faith in her – as though she hadn't noticed it! – but it made her so angry to think that Mika had warned them all not to get attached to her in case she _died _that she no longer had much of a sense of humour about the whole thing. She appreciated Vanez's comments, though, and bowed her head to him in a gesture of respect.

"Thank you very much for your help," she said stiffly, and she meant it, even though they both knew his help had been stunted all along. She had turned straight to Vanez after her realization that neither Larten nor Arrow could help her any longer, and he had stepped up in a way she hadn't fully expected. She half blamed herself a little – she had resented the way Arrow and Vanez treated her and had gone elsewhere for her training, but when she had really thrown herself into Vanez's regime it had been a lot more strenuous than she imagined. Perhaps it had been her stubbornness or perhaps Vanez had realized what must have happened for her to come to him, and no longer felt the need to follow Mika's orders. Either way, she abandoned her stiff nature for a moment to give the older man a friendly kiss on the cheek and a smile to illustrate just how grateful she felt towards him before entering the chamber.

* * *

><p>"Seriously," Gavner said, through painfully gritted teeth. Larten had been unbearable company since sundown, when he'd practically accosted the younger man to ask if he'd seen Arra anywhere. Gavner regretted telling him she'd been sleeping on his floor more than he regretted anything else he'd ever done <em>ever. <em>The orange-haired General had seemingly since decided that Gavner was the closest person he could ask about Arra and whether she was likely to be alright."_Please _calm down. She won't die from not having her last fencing match with you."

"_You know it is not about that_," Larten replied hotly, in more panic than Gavner had ever imagined the stoic man was capable of. "You have _no idea _how bad I am going to feel if something happens to her."

"You've been telling me _exactly _how bad you're going to feel for nearly _three hours_."

"_Do you think this is funny?" _Larten practically screeched, eyes wide. A couple of heads from other benches turned towards them, and Gavner sent round a few apologetic looks before turning back to address his needy friend, very close to being ready to hit him. Luckily, before he was able to, Kurda leaned over from beside him to take over the counselling of the stressed General.

"Look," the blonde-haired, obvious-future-diplomat said, leaning across Gavner. "The fact is, if anything happens to Arra, it isn't your fault. You tried your best to help her – one little fight isn't going to change any of that."

Rather than reminding anyone that this was not just _one little fight_, or trying to explain to anyone how much he had reassured her before every single one of her other Trials and just how much difference he felt that had made, Larten simply gave up and lay his head on the back of the bench in front of him in despair, brushing the shoulder of the person in front of him. Unfortunately, Larten gathered from the awkward silence from Kurda and Gavner, and the way the person he had accidentally touched shifted as far away from him as they could get, he happened to be sitting behind Mika Ver Leth.

"Good evening, Crepsley," said the raven-haired man before he had even raised his head. Then he cleared his throat, and as Larten forced himself to look up, Mika was glaring at him with an intensity that was almost unbearable. "What exactly was it that you meant," he said, voice dangerously low. "When you said Gavner here had _no idea _how bad you were going to feel if anything were to happen to my assistant?"

Larten groaned, incapable of dealing with the interrogation and no longer able to be scared of Mika. "She is not even your assistant any more, Mika," he said, and heard Gavner take a sharp intake of breath next to him. Kurda, it seemed, had stopped breathing entirely. "And we had a falling out. She has not spoken to me since."

Mika's eyes narrowed. It was exactly as he had expected. Larten had not understood her from the beginning, and had probably done something ridiculous as Mika had known he would at some point, and she had run a mile, too proud to admit it but terrified of being taken advantage of. He had probably done something horrible to try to get her into bed with him. Mika felt a surge of pride for her, and a surge of disgust for the vampire in front of him.

"What about, exactly?" he asked, though he felt he already knew. His mind raced with things this lowlife could have said or done to her to turn her against him, and he wondered which of them he would break his neck for.

Larten took a deep breath and sat back in his seat. Gavner was shaking his head rapidly and delivered him two punches to his back, _pleading _with him not to reveal the details of what had happened to her overly-protective and incredibly fearsome mentor. Though he would usually have heeded Gavner's warning, or mentioned none of it to spare Mika's pride, he was so worried over Arra's life that Mika's feelings no longer mattered to him.

"I called her disloyal and accused her of all sorts of things," Larten said eventually, far too bluntly for Gavner's liking. "Only in a few more words. Then I told her you were in love with her. I think she was upset about both rather than one or the other."

Arrow, next to Mika in the row in front of the orange-haired vampire and his two gormless comrades, had to grab his brother's wrist and yank _hard _to stop Mika from rising from his seat and causing some kind of brawl. "_What?_" he roared, spinning in his seat to face Larten. Arrow rolled his eyes inconspicuously and made sure to lay a hand on Mika's back, a warning not to cause bloodshed. He was still recovering a little from his drunken duel on the first night of the Festival and probably couldn't afford to take the chance of suffering another humiliating defeat – he wasn't about to be nominated for Prince just on the basis of his strength and his successes in battle, but they couldn't exactly have a Prince who lost a fight every two nights. Before the conversation could continue or escalate into any sort of fight, however, Kurda diffused the situation by pointing out delicately that Arra was inside the ring.

By nature, these mountain lions, captured outside specifically for use in the Trials, never wished to fight. They were largely afraid of humans, and unlikely to attack one unless it appeared to be easy prey or appeared to be running from them. But, as usual, vampires stimulated different behaviour in animals than humans did. Like domestic cats, which hissed and often attempted to bite vampires and yet managed to live in perfect harmony with humans, cougars often disregarded their fear when it came to being faced with a vampire. It rarely mattered to the lion whether the vampire in question looked like a fearsome opponent – there was something in the smell of vampire blood that spurred them on. The combination of a predisposition to hate and the enclosed space they would find themselves in would almost certainly lead to an attack, depending on the nature of the animal in question. There had been Trials in the past where the lion felt too threatened to do much harm. They could only hope this would be one of those instances.

* * *

><p>The first thing Arra noticed on stepping into the ring was the change in the number of vampires who had come to watch her Trial. Previously it had been packed – and that had been part of what had made her so unbelievably nervous. But, as she looked up, she noticed the crowd was composed of mainly familiar, supportive faces. Evidently, the vampires who wanted to see bloodshed, or wanted to watch a dramatic fight to the death, decided that this was not the Trial for them. There had only been a couple of instances of real wrestling matches between the vampire and the lion, and otherwise the Trial she now faced was usually relatively unimpressive. Her task was to retrieve the stone with the number 32 carved into the back – the Trial stone – from the cage in which the lion would be lowered into the ring. She would either be forced to kill the lion – the usual course of action – or to frighten it away sufficiently to retrieve the object without it attacking while her back was turned.<p>

The lack of a crowd was certainly detrimental to the second option. Perhaps with a crowd of shouting vampires around her the lion might have backed off entirely, terrified by the presence of so many threats. She supposed she had no option, in that case, other than to wait until the creature approached her, dispatch it instantly using the long sword and short knife she had been permitted to take into the Trial, and then retrieve the stone after it was dead.

The thing she liked most about the Trial she had drawn was that there was relatively little in the way of surprises. The lion would emerge from its cage, attack her as soon as it could smell the vampire blood, and she would simply have to kill it as it leapt. This was not like the Path of Needles – there was no strategy, no balance – and it was not like the Maze of Blades – nothing would be there to surprise her, there was nothing to listen out for and be careful of. She simply had to kill a lion.

As the cage was lowered, the snarling beast attempting to push its snout out through the metal bars of the cage and turning wildly, clearing unhappy about being either above ground-level or in such a confined space, Arra made the mistake of looking up into the stands around her. She cast her eyes around the faces of friends and acquaintances, then skimmed over Mika, Larten and Arrow – and then accidentally settled her eyes on those of the animal above her. Instantly, as though it had seen vampirism in her eyes, it let out a fierce scream. Arra cast her eyes down instantly. _Never look them in the eye_, Vanez had told her, _or they might take out one of yours! _It had been a joke, but once again she had managed to overlook a simple piece of advice. She wondered sometimes whether her training had been worthwhile at all, if she continuously ignored key instructions given to her by any of her trainers. She had managed to guarantee that the lion would be aggressive before it had even been released. It wasn't the most fantastic of starts, and by the time the cage reached the ground in front of her the animal inside it was purely furious, snarling and snapping at the bars. Arra took a deep breath to steady herself – up close, she could see clearly how _powerful _the cat was, the muscles of its legs and back shifting as it wildly tried to find a way out of its cage, which made it all the more terrifying – and gripped her weapons tighter. This was an easy Trial, she reminded herself, but somewhere along the line that had stopped being reassuring. All that meant was that if she failed to complete the Trial, she would look like even more of a failure.

Suddenly, the cage opened, and Arra darted into a defensive stance, ready for the attack that she was sure was imminent.

The lion did not move. Instead it simply crouched, growling low in its throat, teeth bared, hissing occasionally. Arra waited and waited – for so long that a few vampires above her started muttering with concern or amusement – but still the creature remained inside the cage, snarling and glaring at her, daring her to take another step towards it.

She had been delighted to have a Trial with no surprises, but had not accounted for unpredictable animal behaviour. How could she reach the stone when she couldn't even _see_ it, probably trapped beneath one of the cougar's paws? She considered waiting it out, but what if the lion never wanted to move? Would that be considered a forfeit on her part? Arra had always despised cats, and felt that disdain growing suddenly. Typical that at one of the most important moments of her life, one of the creatures she hated would decide to toy with her. She took another step forward, and received no reaction. She took another, and then another, but yet again received no reaction. She continued, hearing eerie silence in the stands above her as the vampires tensely waited to see when the animal might strike, getting closer and closer, sword raised and dagger faced forwards to destroy the beast when it leapt for her.

But, stubbornly, the beast did not leap.

She moved forward again and again, until she was far too close to employ her original strategy. She would have no room now if the lion decided to jump at her to catch it in mid-air – if it intended to go for her calves, it could easily bring her to the ground and ensue a wrestling match reminiscent of Vanez's. She was well aware of the dangers of drawing closer and closer, but how could it be avoided? She took another step forwards, and then heard a voice from behind her.

"No closer!" Vanez cried, an edge of desperation to his voice. It was probably difficult for him to watch the Trial that had caused him so much pain again – and watch her repeat the same mistakes that had lost him an eye.

"But how else-?" Arra began, until Vancha tapped the front of the ring, and that silenced her. Though the crowd was free to say as much as they liked to her, she was not permitted to hold any sort of discussion with those outside of the ring, _particularly_ not her tutor. It would not be her Trial if Vanez coaxed her through it, after all. Taking her eyes off the cat for only a second, she nodded briefly at the Prince to show that she understood, and then focused back on her task. Vanez, realising that she could not respond, continued.

"Wait for her to come to you," he said. "Don't let her at your legs."

Rather than responding again and possibly facing disqualification, Arra decided to show Vanez that she was taking his advice on board by taking two slow steps backwards, away from the cage, and then turning to give him a smile of thanks.

She should have guessed from the horror on his face and the sharp gasp of horror from Seba, on his left, that she had done something terribly wrong. She made to spin back around, keep her eyes on the target, but of course it was too late. As if everything was suddenly in slow-motion she remembered a moment from her childhood, watching a cat kill a rat with a pounce and a vicious bite to the back of the neck. The incident had not affected her at the time, but she felt terrible now for not having a little more sympathy with that particular rat.

Too overtaken by shock to feel pain, Arra was only aware of the horrific _weight_ of the cat as it pushed her to the ground, and then of a worrying _snapping _sound from just below her ear. There was no pain at all, but, as though in a dream, she realized she could hear someone screaming – and, after a moment, realized it must have been her. Unable to function rationally, suddenly driven exclusively on instinct, she made the decision that it was necessary to defend herself somehow – and swung the knife in her right hand behind her, forcing her arm into an unnatural angle in order to drive the blade far into the soft underbelly of the lion. Aware of the animal letting out a dying cry, whining and hissing but no longer able to hold her down, Arra managed to shift out from underneath the beast, driving her sword hard into its neck, ending its struggles once and for all.

As she attempted to clamber to her feet, she realized something was terribly wrong.

Her vision was blurred, swimming, and she could barely focus on anything in front of her. She looked up at the rows of vampires but could no longer pick out any faces of anyone she recognized. She was entirely covered in blood and all of a sudden she recognized that she could hear her pulse so much more loudly than ever. Though her heart had been beating in her ears for the entire Trial, a combination of adrenaline and terror, now she could feel it truly _pumping_ at the side of her neck, and when she raised a hand to the bizarre feeling, she could feel the blood gushing out, pulsing, drenching her completely. The painlessness was terrifying in itself, and she began to panic, breathing shakily and stumbling forwards, unable to keep her balance for a reason she couldn't understand. Pure instinct dictated to her that she needed to head towards the cage, and she stumbled towards it, but collapsed just in front of it, apparently unable to control her limbs at all. She reached a hand inside one of the bars and, by the luck of the Vampire Gods, instantly felt the rock between her fingers, though she could not see it or even focus on the cage itself. She held it up, proudly, and she distantly heard Vancha March begin to congratulate her – but on completion of the Trial suddenly the thudding and pumping at her neck was too much, becoming painful instantly, and she let out a cry of panic and agony as she pressed her hands to the wound. There were voices around her and hands on her arms and sides, possibly trying to coax her into standing, but suddenly her vision blurred excessively and she could do nothing but fall back into death's waiting embrace.

* * *

><p>It became clear several hours later that the embrace had not been death's after all, but Mika's.<p>

"She's awake," said a voice above Arra as she cracked open an eye and instantly coughed, her throat bizarrely dry, and then regretted it immensely – the movement and the sharp shock of pain that followed it caused her to let out a whimper. Suddenly she felt a hand clasp gently around hers, though when she attempted to turn her head to see who was offering the comfort an intense pain in the side of her neck halted her progress.

"It's me," said her old mentor's voice and she relaxed, staring up at the recognizable ceiling of the medical cell she was constantly assigned. "You passed the Trial."

She wondered why he had mentioned that. She knew she had passed the Trial – she could remember _vividly_ her struggle to show the stone to all overlooking the Trial, the horrendous blind panic she felt as the blood pumped out of her, convinced completing the Trial was probably the last thing she'd ever do. "Of course," she croaked, and he laughed a little at that, as if surprised at her conviction.

"Well, I'm glad you're starting to feel confident," he said, amused. Clearly he thought she could remember nothing leading up to her collapse – surprisingly, she remembered everything. Her main concern was how long she'd been unconscious, and how much time she had to be capable of movement before her next challenge. Reaching up with the hand he wasn't clutching, she touched a hand to the bandaged side of her neck, flinching at the touch and at the hot, wet feel of the blood seeping through the gauze. Mika let out a sigh. "Don't touch it," he reprimanded gently, reaching up himself to grasp her other hand and return it to her side. "The medics have stitched you up; it's just still bleeding a little." To Arra, "a little" seemed to be the understatement of the year – the bandage had been soaking – but she was far too weak to argue the point. She tried again to move her head in any direction, shocked at the amount of pain any movement caused, and finally Mika reached up and hooked one arm around her back, his other supporting her head, and gently brought her forwards and into a sitting position.

"How long was I unconscious?" she asked immediately as he took a seat next to the hammock. The room was empty except for Mika – evidently the medics had finished their work on her and moved onto a vampire needing more urgent attention, which was a relatively good sign. The strangeness of Larten not being there to see if she was alright struck her in the back of her mind, but she waved that thought away instantly.

"Three or four hours," Mika said. "You still have plenty of time. Don't worry."

She let out a thoughtful hum at that, then a deep breath. She levelled him with a look that let him know she was not fooled by his misplaced optimism. "I can't even move, Mika," she commented dryly. "I think that might qualify as cause to worry."

He looked _so_ worried then that she felt bad for even bringing up the prospect of her next Trial – the concept of her own death didn't seem to scare her nearly as much as it did him. She wondered if he was about to tell her that he'd never thought taking the Trials was wise, or voice his disapproval of her decision in some way, but instead he stared back at her with a kind of tenderness she'd never seen before in his black eyes – she was left a little bit speechless until he smiled gently at her, and reached out to lay a hand on her cheek. "I believe in you," Mika said finally, simply, and then nodded as though he had even surprised himself with that revelation. "I am not worried because I have no cause to be."

Her heart, or something, jumped in her chest – she had never realized how much his approval meant to her, perhaps, or perhaps she was just touched by the moment of complete honesty. With effort, she grinned at him, and reached up with her most capable arm to clasp the hand he had laid against her cheek. "I admit that at first I found it difficult to imagine a woman undertaking some of the Trials you have faced – I know it is awful, but that was my reason for trying to keep you from attempting the Trials in the first place. Perhaps I had been swayed by others with no faith in you – I should have remembered how many times you have been such an asset to me in battle – but, whatever it was, you were right when you said I did not believe you could do it. Watching you attempt the Trials of Initiation and get this far with relatively few problems has made me prouder than you can imagine. I have every confidence in you for your last Trial tomorrow."

She nodded, and would have humbly bowed her head to him had her injury not prevented it. "About time too," she said, chuckling. "And this means no more threatening Vanez not to hurt me in training I suppose?"

Mika laughed at that, and then ran a hand over his eyes in embarrassment. "I am sorry about that," he said awkwardly. "I never could bear the thought of you getting hurt. I still can't." He sighed sadly, and then looked back up at her. "I suppose you already know why now, don't you? There's no point trying not to say so anymore."

For a second she couldn't remember what he meant, still so moved by his kindness, and then suddenly Larten's anger from the day before came back to her with a jolt.

"I love you," Mika said. "I resent that Crepsley robbed me of a chance to tell you myself, but I suppose that much was inevitable after all these years. I love you – I have for as long as I've known you, I've begun to think I simply won't ever be able to stop. I _love you_, you have no idea how wonderful it feels to finally tell you."

When she said nothing, suddenly so confused about the way she felt about Mika, whether she felt anything at all or whether it was all a construction to save his feelings, he regained his usual composure. "Say nothing about it now," he finished, smiling at her again, even though she stared back at him blankly, blatantly unable to come to any decision about her own feelings on the matter. "This isn't the time to worry yourself about anything like that. Focus on tomorrow. You'll make it – I know you will. But rest for now."

Helping her to lie down comfortably again, acutely aware of her stunned silence, Mika pressed a kiss to her temple and let himself out of the medical cell without another word.

* * *

><p>"Arrow, it's urgent," Mika persisted as he practically chased the older General around the Mountain.<p>

"I have a meeting with the Princes, Mika," Arrow replied, exasperated. "It isn't going to look fantastic if I'm late – I'm sorry, I just haven't got time. I'll meet you at sundown if you like, if whatever it is can wait –"

"No, no," Mika interrupted, finally catching up to his brother and matching his strides, the pair quite intimidating as they stalked the long corridor to the Hall of Princes, ignoring the other vampires in their path, all of whom scurried to avoid them. Kind-hearted they both may have been, but they adored their fearsome reputation. "A meeting with the Princes is _exactly _what I was hoping you were rushing off to. I need to come with you."

Arrow stopped in his tracks and swivelled to face Mika, eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Um, you can't just tag along to these meetings, Mika," he said, not sure what to make of the situation or the desperate look in the raven-haired man's eyes. "I think if they wanted to speak to you, they might have asked."

Mika rolled his eyes. "Well, _obviously_," he said at length, and then grasped Arrow's thick forearm arm. "I need you to get me an audience with the Princes today. Before midnight. I can take it from there, but I need you to get me in first."

Arrow simply stared back at him blankly. Mika sighed.

"I wouldn't ask," he said downheartedly. "If it wasn't absolutely _vital_."

Knowing that any further questioning on a matter which was clearly of such great importance to Mika was probably going to be futile, Arrow slowly nodded. "Alright," he murmured reluctantly. "Only because it's you. But if you fuck this up and they blame me, I'll skin you alive."

Mika grinned happily. "Cheers for the vote of confidence," he said, clapping Arrow on the shoulder and following him through to the Hall of Princes.

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><p>"Arra, for the love of the Vampire Gods, will you <em>wake up<em>?"

At that gentle invitation, Arra creaked open one eye to tell whoever had barged into her medical cell that she needed rest and if they liked having limbs they had better leave her in peace. Instead of voicing any of that, she caught sight of a flash of orange hair the second her vision cleared, and promptly groaned. Out of anyone in the world she had been hoping to see, it had not been Larten. _Or had it?_

"Go away," she said, but it came out far more childishly than she had meant it to sound, and so she cleared her throat and fixed him with a glare. "I need rest before my next Trial. As fascinating as I find your conversation, I'll talk to you some other time."

"Stop being ridiculous," the orange-haired man replied, and before she was fully aware of what was happening, had grabbed both of her hands and was attempting to pull her to her feet. Arra let out a prolonged hiss of pain at the strain the movement put on the back of her neck, feeling the wound burn at such behaviour, and silently vowed that she'd kill Larten Crepsley when she was in any fit state to do so. "How are you going to attempt a Trial if you cannot even make it out of a hammock?"

"I have hours before the Trial," she growled, ripping one of her hands out of his grasp.

"You need to be moving _before _then, ideally!" He suddenly looked less cross and more concerned, though he clenched his jaw as though he was still irritated with her. "Arra, you have been stitched up. There is nothing else the medics can do. The rest is up to you. Wasting the next five hours is hardly going to help you prepare – who in the name of Petra Vin Grahl suggested sleeping off that injury I _do not_ know, but it is integral you get moving again." When she simply looked back at him, he took an abrupt step back, grabbing her biceps and forcefully dragging her to her feet. The pain in her neck and her back was vaguely unbearable, and she had an intense urge to tell him that he simply didn't _understand _the pain she was in, or that he had no business telling her how she should or shouldn't be preparing for her final Trial, but deep down, the more she considered it, the more she began to agree with the point he was ineloquently trying to make. When she was standing, he faced her, and looked her seriously in the eyes.

"Now," he said. "How far can you turn your head?"

"I can't turn it at all," she answered, biting back any number of sarcastic remarks. She made a half-hearted effort to do so, turning to the right with difficulty, but barely making it past the centre when she attempted to look to her left. "Did you even watch the Trial?" she asked, annoyed. "The lion tried to rip out my spinal cord. I'm not exactly loving life right now, Crepsley, and neither is my neck."

He simply rolled his eyes.

"Come on," he said, picking up the gauze and the washcloth the medics had left for when the dressing needed to be changed and stuffing them into one pocket. Then he headed towards the door, opening it with one arm and looking at her expectantly. "_Come on_," he barked, more an order than a request, gesturing with one arm that she should leave. She almost laughed – even now, as he valiantly tried to be cruel to be kind, he couldn't help but hold the door open for her. Convincing herself that she was not being obedient, only playing along, she slid past him out of the doorway, wincing at a sharp pain in one of her legs – the details were a little blurry, but she assumed sometime after the creature had pounced at her she had landed heavily, crushed under its weight, and simply hadn't noticed with the overwhelming, obscuring pain in her neck. Larten fell into line beside her quickly.

"See," he said, softer than before. "You are walking now. A minute ago you were convinced you were not going to be able to get up at all."

She didn't reply to that, and so he cleared his throat, adjusted the clasp of his cape and stalked off ahead, overtaking her quickly. He glanced back at her as he strode off, and she simply glared back, unimpressed. "Keep up, Sails," he said coolly. "I was led to believe your speed was your main asset…"

In the back of her mind it amused her that he was going to so much effort to bait her just to force her back onto her feet – he was certainly a poor actor, and even when he spoke to her unkindly he never managed to cover up the warmth in his eyes. As angry as she was with him, deep down, she forced herself to play along with his game – after all, his help had never failed her before. Making an effort to keep her head still and straight, she picked up her pace, trying to overcome the pain in her leg and her back. As she sped up, though, so did he, until eventually he coaxed her into a jog, and then a run, and finally a _painful _sprint. As he darted down a left-hand tunnel, possibly leading to the Sports Halls, she accidentally turned her head too sharply to the left, straining the new stitches unnecessarily and forcing her to come to a halt, gasping at the shock of pain.

As she looked up, somehow he was beside her. It occurred to her briefly that he must have been watching her solidly as they ran, checking on her progress to make sure nothing untoward happened to her. Angry as she still was with him, she warmed to him a little when he sat her down at the edge of the tunnel.

"Turn around," he said quietly, fetching the little bandaging kit he'd taken from the medical wing. "Sorry, Arra – I should have known it would be too much too soon."

"You meant well," she admitted, and thinking about it he really had – how would she have been prepared for her final Trial still laid up in a medical hammock, convinced she couldn't move at all? She turned sideways and leant on one arm to give him access to the wounds at the back of her neck – and, he noticed, as he removed the bloody bandage covering the worst of the damage, the other extensive cuts and scratches covering her shoulders and back. He tried not to react to the sight of the recently stitched damage. Vampires rarely employed the use of stitches, but in this case there had been no other option. He could see even now, from the punctured look of the skin around the wound, that the damage had been extensive and she would have been unable to attempt anything like her current level of movement had they not closed the wound as soon as they were able.

"How does it look?" she asked, her voice devoid of any optimism. It felt terribly painful, and she imagined any damage from sharp teeth in the back of one's neck was probably going to be gruesome. She was suddenly glad for the mountain's lack of mirrors – fortunately she would probably never have any chance to examine this particularly unpleasant scar.

Unsure of the best way to respond, Larten did his best to sound casual. He felt oddly squeamish at the sight of the fresh wound, but he couldn't place why – it was hardly as though his years as a vampire had left him unable to deal with the sight of blood, and he had both received, inflicted and witnessed many horrific wounds in the past. It was surely something about the look of the blossoming carnation-red against the otherwise unmarred skin of her neck and shoulders that made him so uncomfortable. He felt in a way he never had done before like it was a shame – he cared very little if he or Gavner gained another scar, but on Arra's flawless dusky skin it seemed almost a travesty. He tried to put the thought out of his mind – she had chosen to be a warrior and not just a woman, after all – and he set about bandaging her up again as though he had not thought anything unusual about the process. "Hmm, it is not fantastic," he said, wondering if perhaps he had just made a lion attack sound like an average bruise. He pocketed the bloody rag that had hidden the wound immediately, wrapped in another couple of layers of gauze – his robes were red anyway, as ever, and she certainly did not need to see the blood if she couldn't already feel it. "But I have seen you deal with many injuries. You can certainly manage this one."

She hummed as though she weren't sure if he was telling her the truth or not, but seemed to accept his answer anyway, and leant sideways against the wall as he carried on tending to her injuries. She almost drew a parallel between his words and Mika's earlier, and almost voiced it – but then reminded herself that perhaps that wasn't the best idea. Larten sighed from behind her. "I am sorry," he said, perhaps taking advantage of a situation in which she couldn't leave before he had finished speaking, slowing down and cleaning around the stitches with an edge of his cape before beginning to replace the bandages. "I cannot believe I could be so childish as to quarrel with you just before your Trial. Ah, you have no idea how I tormented myself over that – and quite possibly tormented Gavner as well…"

She smiled despite herself.

"I did not mean it," he said, applying a healing salve around the stitches. She hissed at the pain, surprised by its intensity, and he pressed the kindest of kisses to the very top of her neck, just below her hairline, brushing his lips against the skin instead of applying any pressure, frightened to hurt her. "I did not mean any of it."

However much she wanted to believe herself above feelings for now – she had felt so strong when she had told herself that neither Larten nor Mika mattered to her, that she was independent and capable of facing the Trials without their support or their complex emotional issues – she couldn't help but soften a little at the gesture.

"You did mean it, though," she argued, softly. However weak it made her feel, she desperately would have liked to have been given a proper excuse to forgive him. "I could tell you'd thought about it for a long time when you said it."

He sighed, pressed so close to her back that she felt the brush of the breath on the back of her hair. He was sticking down the gauze, and when he had finished she shifted back against the wall to face him from the side. It surprised her, when she looked at him, to see that he was _blushing_. It was almost comical.

He groaned. "I was – jealous," he admitted sheepishly, his face the colour of his robes. When that answer failed to satisfy her, he stared hard at the ground for a moment, and then looked up at her eyes. "I was terrified that you – loved Mika, like he loves you. It was not that I had any reason to believe it was so; only that I was paranoid it might be. Only, I know it is none of my business who you choose and who you do not – and I had no right to accuse you of anything. But I was hurt when I thought you felt that way about Mika, because – I'd like you to feel like that about _me_, but I know it's up to you, and it was just that I had allowed myself to feel so strongly for you and the more I heard his name the more I thought I'd been a fool, and –"

Unable to watch him make a fool out of himself any longer, Arra took pity on him, and with some effort reached out a hand to press two fingers to his lips. It seemed he wasn't quite done, though, and rather than allow her to stop him, he reached up and clasped the hand she'd been trying to use to shut him up in his own. The sincerity in his eyes was overpowering; it terrified her, but she trusted him entirely.

"I –" he cut himself off, and she knew why, but it didn't bother her – in fact, it reassured her. He wouldn't say he loved her until he was certain he meant it. He was not one to throw those kinds of words around lightly, and he couldn't make himself say it if he felt there was a chance he might have been misleading her, or might have mistaken his own feelings. She supposed she could have been offended, but it just made her feel all the more at ease. "I have never felt like this before," he admitted quietly. He was so awkward, composure completely lost, that she wondered if this was the same strict, hard Larten who had trained her all those nights before her Trials, the one Mika had worried was hurting her too much. Without another word, she slid her hand out from his, tangling it instead in the collar of his shirt to drag him forward into a kiss.

She had felt a brief moment of indecision earlier with Mika, wondering if she felt anything for him and, if she did, what exactly it might be. She realized now that there should have been no need to search for the feelings towards him at all – anything she felt for Mika, as much as she owed to him and as much as she treasured him, certainly could never compare to this. For the first time, the thought of dying terrified her – and only because she didn't want to miss another second of this.

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><p>mushy ending, i know - but this chapter has been impossible to writefinish. i tried so hard to keep them in character, but i felt they really needed a big MOMENT at some point. hope you enjoyed if you're reading x


	8. Chapter 8

Hello! So sorry for my months upon months of absence. Life got tough. I'm determined to finish this though, so I provide this (the beginning of the final chapter) as a peace offering to anyone who might still read this or might still be waiting for it to be finished. I'm so sorry. Also I'd like to extend my greatest thanks to sweetlittleoldlady - I am so sorry I never got back to you. I ended up buying my own copy instead of dinner one night...haha. But your offer was so kind, thank you so so much and I'm deeply sorry if I gave you the wrong idea. I really hope you enjoy this little bit and the chapter soon to follow if you're still reading, you really are lovely!

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><p>As Arra waited outside the Hall of Princes, it occurred to her suddenly that the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that had plagued her before picking each of her other Trials was no longer there. As Larten paced the corridor in front of her irritatingly and she watched the lines in his forehead as he worried over her, she realized that she was simply no longer nervous. It was odd, really, to feel so at ease – she knew there was just as high a chance of dying tonight as there had been any other night, but she was happy regardless. At least before she died she'd really <em>felt<em> again, like she hadn't in so many years. As she thought of that, she caught a corner of Larten's cape as he strode back and forth, the small tug bringing him to an abrupt halt.

"You're so annoying," she said, but smiled gently all the same. All that feeling had been because of him. She felt startlingly thankful suddenly, not just for all the help and support he'd offered her, but for making her feel like she thought she never would, just before it might have been too late. As he exhaled, trying to relax, she caught him off guard with a soft peck to the lips. He laughed, such was his shock, and stared back at her with a reverence in his eyes she'd never seen before. Before he could ask what had brought on the sudden affection, or perhaps kiss her again, Arra had grabbed one of his hands.

"Do you remember," she began, staring up at him to gauge his reaction. "Just before The Maze of Blades, how you told me not to be sentimental because by the end of my Trials the sentiment would have lost all meaning?"

Larten laughed at the memory, and remembered just as well how much he had wished during the Trial that he hadn't said that to her just before she undertook the test. However good his reasons had been, he'd always somewhat wished that he'd allowed her to finish what she had to say to him – but of course, the preservation of her confidence had been more important. He nodded awkwardly, hoping she hadn't just remembered to chastise him for it.

"Did you know what I was going to say?" she asked curiously. "Is that why you wouldn't let me?"

Dumbly, he shook his head, mind racing to cover the obvious topics – he'd always assumed it would have been some variation on thanks for helping in her preparation, or some wish regarding what to do with her remains if she died during the Trial. He hadn't wanted her to even be considering death as she entered the Maze, let alone focusing on what would be done with her body if she couldn't make it out alive; and he certainly hadn't wanted to be considering it himself. But he'd hoped more than ever for her survival after that, and wondered all the way through how he'd ever live with himself if he hadn't allowed her to tell him exactly how he wished to deal with her ashes. He'd vowed not to cut her off again, but she'd never attempted to say anything after that. He'd assumed it mustn't have been important.

Arra chuckled. "It's going to sound very foolish," she said. "But I can't die and never tell you."

"You are not going to die," he reassured her automatically, but she silenced him with one finger over his lips.

"I was convinced I had no chance of pulling through," she reminded him softly, glancing around briefly to check if anyone else would overhear them. "I was so shaken from the first Trial that surviving another night hadn't even occurred to me as a possibility, and so it didn't matter to me in that moment that I would sound ridiculous, or how you might respond – all that mattered was that, as far as I could believe, I was going to die and never see you again." She glanced down at an unspecific spot on his chest, still keeping her index finger over his lips to make sure he did not take the opportunity to interrupt her. "You didn't know it then like you probably do now, but even then, even before everything that's happened since – I was going to tell you I loved you that night, because I was already so sure of it."

It was a far too emotional confession for her to feel comfortable, and she suddenly couldn't force herself to look at him. As she felt him draw a breath to speak, in same the moment the guard called her name, she shook her head. "Let me do it this time," she said quietly, and then wrapped her arms around his neck to whisper into his ear. "Larten, before I go," she repeated, as though they were back in the same moment six nights before. "I just wanted to tell you I love you."

She couldn't bear to hear him stumble over his words, or look into his eyes to see the predictable shadow of doubt – before he had any chance to hurt her, she slipped away towards the Hall, disappearing inside with a quiet thanks to the Vampire Gods for allowing her that one last perfect moment.


	9. Chapter 9

Hello again. I can't believe this isn't the last chapter, I'm sorry it's taking so long to get there for anyone managing to still be interested! But I promise lots of exciting things next update, really. Therefore, just to point out, THIS IS NOT THE END, even though it does seem like it. Still lots more interesting things to come.

Hope you enjoy

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><p>"Trial number 2," Paris Skyle announced. "The Pit of Snakes."<p>

There were a variety of murmurs in the Hall after that revelation, some reassuring and some less so. The Pit of Snakes was one of the oldest Trials, created hundreds of years before even Paris Skyle's birth, and one of the original tests used to distinguish the leaders from the followers in Vampire culture. Of course, as the story went, the Trial had been developed over those hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Some sceptics said it had been made easier, but the majority agreed that it had been made a lot more difficult – the snake-keeper at Vampire Mountain had been able to source increasingly dangerous breeds of snake as modern travel and trade grew, and the introduction of the added inconvenience of having to search for three vials – all, ironically, containing the necessary antidotes for the bites you were likely going to receive while undertaking the Trial – had only been introduced in the last hundred years, as the antidotes themselves had been developed. Of course, this removed the terror of receiving a bite; in the years before the antidotes were introduced as part of the task, the main aim of the Trial was to stealthily avoid being bitten by anything with the capacity to kill you. However, it did not remove the immediate pain and effects of the bites before the Trial ended, some of which were truly horrific. It also added the problem of needing to sweep the floor and the bodies of the snakes constantly for the vials, therefore making the likelihood of receiving bites far greater.

Though the snakes were of all kinds, venomous and constricting, the worry for most vampires was purely the venom. Vampires, with their inhuman strength, rarely died from attacks from the constricting snakes – although they did add another dimension of difficulty to the Trial.

It wasn't the best news, but Arra couldn't help but breathe a brief sigh of relief – at no point during her Trials had she come up against her most feared Trial, or indeed any one-on-one combat with another vampire. She tried to feel more thankful, but as the Hall buzzed with movement and she began walking to the snake pit, she couldn't help but wish she hadn't prepared so extensively for this Trial. Vanez had suggested she learn to feel the differences between the breeds of snakes she was likely to come across so that she was capable of identifying them even in the low light – and become capable of trying to avoid the ones that were likely to kill her before she could even reach the end of the tunnel. Her mind raced through the different types – not all the snakes in the gruesome pit were venomous, they merely added to the psychological impact of crawling through a pit of the dangerous animals – and she remembered the ones she feared most in a heartbeat. Though she feared the most dangerous snakes, the venom from some could take weeks to kill her – and she knew whatever the pain she experienced, she would consume the antidote before then. It was the Mamba she remembered best from her extensive studying sessions with Vanez – and his warning that without securing the antidotes to its bite and leaving the pit as a matter of complete urgency, she was likely to be dead as near as fifteen minutes after the attack.

There was no time to consider it for too long. The snake-keeper was not present – one of his assistants had been maintaining the snakes, and the youngster, barely more than a boy, nodded sadly at her as he stood at the entrance to the tunnel. It scared her more than the snakes themselves that this boy who knew so much about the snakes inside had no hope for her survival. As one of the guards briefly stepped inside the cavern of snakes, scattering the three vials inside where they were quickly swept away and dragged under by the sliding bodies of the snakes, he jumped back with a yell as a darting viper almost made contact with his ankle.

"Feisty today," he attempted to joke, examining his foot briefly for any evidence that the snake had made contact.

"It didn't bite," the assistant told him impatiently, sensing Arra's desperation to follow the vials as quickly as she could. "Trust me, you'd more than be able to feel it if it had."

Hardly reassured by that exchange, Arra brushed the guard aside and took her place at the entrance to the pit. The assistant made the Death's Touch sign respectfully at her, and, listening to the murmurs of the concerned vampires behind her but not allowing herself to look back, Arra set off inside.

The aggressive viper that had been out to injure the guard had seemingly slithered away. The steps leading down into the pit immersed her bit by bit into the pit of writhing snakes, and she tried to be as gentle as possible as she slid in amongst them – but of course, her warm blood set her apart instantly, however much she mimicked their slow movement. As she reached the bottom of the pit, she was submerged in snakes up to her knees – the ceiling of the deadly tunnel was low, too, forcing her to bend forwards at an uncomfortable angle and offer her arms up to the vicious snakes. She was thankful again for being one of the smaller vampires. She could only imagine a vampire of Arrow's impressive height undertaking this kind of test – he would have been forced to bend at the knee and hunch uncomfortably, making the journey almost impossible.

Nevertheless, she did not feel entirely thankful – especially not when, as she slid forward and examined the surface of the glistening scales to see if any of the vials remained on top, a unidentified snake from around her calf sunk its teeth in, causing an instant explosion of pain, intense enough to make her cry out through gritted teeth. She tried to remember that the instant, burning pain spreading from the bite was reassuring – the more deadly snakebites would be almost painless, and would instead result more worrying effects moments afterwards – but it was difficult to be grateful for anything as the venom coursed through her. Trying to force herself to continue, Arra slid her arms shoulder deep into the pit, brushing around for any sign of one of the vials and receiving another startlingly painful bite to the sensitive inside of her elbow in return.

Thankfully, the pit was narrow – so much so that there were only a few inches on either side of her – and so, as she pushed forwards, Arra could be certain that if she searched thoroughly enough with every step, a vial escaping her was almost a complete impossibility. A bright pit viper lunged at her, striking her twice in the shoulder as she searched for the vial beneath it. She knew logically that it was unwise to try and swat away the snakes – these stone-eyed creatures were not afraid of her, and the last thing she needed to do was to provoke them. But stopping herself from ripping the snake's jaws clean apart when it lunged at her again was overwhelming. Trying to ignore the pain from the bites – the snake was no longer even connecting with her when it struck, merely trying to intimidate her – Arra swept her hands around beneath the surface, suffering an attack from what looked like a puff adder to her neck along the way.

The thick, large, angry snake hissed loudly, but Arra no longer minded. The pain from the bite, which had been just above her collarbone, felt like it was nearly enough to knock her out. Perhaps it was the combination of the potent cocktail of venom's she was already injected with, but Arra was forced to turn to the side and brace both hands against the cool tunnel wall, closing her eyes and exhaling shakily as her vision swam. Vampires had far more tolerance for the venom injected by these snakes than humans did – but, nevertheless, they weren't infallible. As she stood still, the snakes seemed to feel less threatened by her presence, and the two she had offended slithered away as she took several deep breaths, trying to slow her quickening breathing. Arra couldn't quite identify whether she was panicking or whether this was all a result of the venom – but she was shivering, panting, and unable to focus on any of the snakes as individuals as they slid around her. A red, yellow and black patterned snake (Arra could no longer recall anything about which snakes were dangerous and which were less so; seemingly all of them caused hideous agony one way or another) slithered close to her and then quickly diverted, clearly one of the less confrontational snakes who were terrified of the unwelcome presence. As it flicked its tail to get as far from the warm-blooded threat as possible, a small vial was displaced from underneath it. Forcing herself into movement again, Arra darted to catch the tiny bottle – but stumbled in the process, dizzy and confused from the toxins.

Thanks to nothing but the luck of the Gods, none of the aggressive reptiles struck at her for her mistake. As she was forced to crouch, clasping one vial tightly to avoid losing it in her state, Arra noticed that all of the snakes she had been imagining around her were all the same colour – it took her a long, horrified moment to recognize that they were all _the same snake. _She couldn't control a yell of pure terror as she took in the sheer size of the beast swirling around her – she could see its tail, but she couldn't follow it long enough to be able to find its head. It didn't matter much. She felt no need to watch the head of a snake this size, its body thicker than her legs, knowing that the danger from this snake wouldn't be its bite. As she remembered the _other_ danger of snakes, it was a little too late already – she turned around and saw the snake everywhere, coiling slowly around her legs, ready to constrict.

With no other option, and filled with complete horror at the idea of being asphyxiated by a snake – Arra was forced to lean backwards and swing up her legs, escaping the grip of the python but falling back into the pit, sinking in completely. In a claustrophobic struggle to free her face and breathe, Arra struck out at the snakes covering her, and earned another vicious bite, this time to the back of her shoulder, for her foolishness. The bite was not as painful as she had expected, and she studied the snake afterwards to ascertain its breed. It was light in colour, slim and long – but before she could make any decisions about it, it rose up and struck again at her arm, so fast that even with her vampire senses she could barely register the movement. As it reared back, jaws apart, she recognized the breed with a start from its black eyes and black mouth. _The mamba_.

Everything else suddenly faded into insignificance as realization dawned. Combined with the number of bites she'd already received from the other snakes and how dizzy she'd already felt, Arra wondered if she had even the fifteen minutes Vanez had suggested to leave the pit. Thankfully, the snake did not strike again, instead slithering back defensively, flicking a small vial in her direction as it did so. Careful not to intimidate the aggressive, dangerous reptile, Arra attempted to grasp the vial with the same arm that had experienced the bite, only to find that she was unable to use it for much at all – when her hand ghosted over it, she found the tingling was spreading down into her fingers, and she couldn't grip the bottle. Quickly picking up the slack with her other arm, and fumbling to slip the two vials into a pouch at her side, she fought the temptation to speed away from the snake that had caused her so much trouble, knowing that it would reward her with another bite for her behaviour. Instead, her body screaming at her to leave the pit as soon as possible, Arra forced herself to shift forwards at a snail's pace, determined that she couldn't be bitten by another venomous snake. She could see the end of the tunnel clearly, a pleasing ray of light where the doors were slightly ajar, and she had to force every muscle in her body to slow against its will, for fear of missing a vial or collapsing before she could reach the end.

The tingling was more pronounced in that arm and across her shoulders now, definitely spreading – and she quickly dismissed that arm as unreliable and tucked it across her stomach, not bothering to use it to search for the last vial when it was unable to feel much at all. Determined to find the third vial before the tingling disabled her other arm as well, Arra forced her eyes into slits as though this might help her focus her vision. The troublesome huge constricting snake slithered around her again and, whether from the effects of the venom or from her inability to cope with anymore battles with the horrible creatures, she let out a cry of shock and twisted away, locking a hand around the beast's neck to turn it away from her. The other snakes all seemed to speed up as she moved, angered by her aggression, but she did her best to ignore their threats and sink down again into the pit to sweep around for the last vial. She tried not to think about the fact that perhaps in the mass of sliding scales the last had been pushed around her, carried on the back of one of the snakes, and had ended up back near the entrance. With the panic, lethargy and pain flooding her veins, the idea of having to backtrack was too much. She could feel absolutely nothing from her shoulder down in the bitten arm now, and as she flicked her eyes towards it in the dim light, she noticed it was a decidedly different colour to the other, healthier arm – and just as she started to feel the panic rising in her at the idea that she'd almost certainly have to get this arm amputated if she managed to get out alive, a snake from her side darted forward too quickly for her to follow and attached itself firmly to her wrist. The worst thing of all was that she felt absolutely nothing – the arm right down to fingertips was dark pink, and so, at the psychological effects of being injected with more harmful venom rather than from any pain, she let out a screech and, as she had avoided doing earlier, locked her other hand around the ugly creature's head, mashing the horrible thing against the cavern wall in a moment of madness. Had she been thinking clearly, Arra would have known that there was no point attacking the snakes – they would kill her, weakened as she was, before she even got through a couple of them if she stupidly tried to destroy them all. Accordingly to her increased movement and the way her pulse must have been hammering, the other snakes began to close in. The huge constrictor was back around her ankle again – if it couldn't squeeze her to death, as strong as she was, it could certainly break her leg – and she swore she could see the nondescript back of the mamba as it swam between the bodies of the less harmful snakes.

Just as the chips were down, and just as Arra wondered whether she was happy to die like this, in a pit full of some disgusting animal she couldn't bear the look of, remarkably a snake with a pattern she could not recognize, twisted away from her in fear and dislodged the third vial. For a moment she stared at it dumbly as it sank into the other bodies, thinking in her confusion that it couldn't possibly be real. Then, before she lost sight of it, she managed to pull herself together long enough to grasp it and hold onto it as tightly as she could. There was no rule against consuming the contents of the vial before leaving the chamber, and so she made to undo one of the bottles – but her hesitation had cost her. The mamba slithered around her hip, beneath the hem of her shirt, and though she could see it blurrily making to attack, the confusion produced by the venom allowed her to do absolutely nothing to prevent it. She simply stood and watched as the snake darted and injected her again and then _again_, barely feeling a thing.

After that, Arra felt nothing at all. She could no longer feel the snakes around her, only vaguely see their movement, and she could only barely focus on the shred of light ahead of her. It took her nearly a minute to fasten the lid back onto the bottle she hadn't had the chance to drink from and slide it inside with the others, in which time she could almost feel the venom pumping through her. Dimly she realized that the arm she had been worried over earlier was now not her only problem. As the venom crept around her from that injury she was finding it increasingly difficult to catch her breath – in the shock she could not fathom why, and assumed it was down to panic. Then, as she fought to stay standing, she wondered slowly if her lungs were infected.

The thought of the venom disabling her lungs and slowly asphyxiating her when she had technically completed the Trial finally snapped Arra out of her confusion. Though it was almost impossible to put one foot in front of the other, there was nothing else left to do – and so, tripping on every other step and sometimes falling to her knees and suffering other bites that she no longer noticed, Arra closed her eyes and allowed her body, with its last vestiges of strength, to guide her towards the light. As she tripped again and crumbled to her knees she attempted to stand again and felt a snake close around her arm, so tightly she wondered how she had not noticed it coming for her. In her dire panic over losing her only reasonably useful limb, Arra made an attempt to shake it off, dragging herself to her feet and slamming her hand against the wall. It was only when she tripped again in the process that she realized she was tripping over the steps towards the exit. The hand around her arm belonged to someone she did not recognize, but the more she tried to focus the more she realized it was a person rather than a snake trapping her. Blinded by complete confusion, she wildly struck out at the intruder, unable to tell him in words that he would pay the price for stepping into the pit of snakes if he wasn't careful. Suddenly there was another arm and then another, and she realized with an odd sense of surprise – though it was accompanied by no elation – that the snakes were no longer around her, nor could she see one anywhere.

"Do you have the vials?" Someone asked. "Did you find them?"

Arra understood the question, but she had no idea anymore why she was here, why she would have vials on her or where the snakes had gone. Had she been looking for vials? She attempted to ask some of her questions, but there was raucous noise around her and she felt nobody would hear her. It felt like there were hands, or snakes, all over her, and the next thing she was aware of was her throat choking on a thick cool liquid, and something covering her mouth as she attempted to gag. This happened time after time, liquid forced into her throat however hard her body attempted to expel it, and then suddenly, nothing – a bizarre presence of mind, but no feeling whatsoever. For the first time in apparently a long while, Arra had opened her eyes and come face to face with a medic.

"Ah, there we go," the young vampire said, looking away from her to alert one of the others. "Boss, she's started coming around!"

Suddenly there were several more faces in front of her, and suddenly Arra had the beginnings of pain across her stomach and her arms and legs. As the mist cleared, she stared up at one of the faces, opening her mouth in an attempt to form words but finding only a hiss escaping her.

"Not yet," the older medic told her, putting a finger to her lips and closing them for her. "You don't need to worry about anything; you just relax and take a breather for now, girl. You ignore all the noise. Don't you go falling asleep on us again though; Sebastian, you keep her with us!"

Finally able to form a coherent thought, Arra wondered what he had meant by "all the noise" when as far as she'd been aware, there was an eerie silence on a white background with only medics, none of whom were speaking much. But as she focused, suddenly the white background was more of a stone wall, and slowly the roars of other vampires fed back into her ears, deafeningly loud.

"Congratulations, Arra Sails," boomed a voice that echoed around her head – it was almost Paris Skyle, but then she couldn't be sure. "This victory concludes your Trials of Initiation. You are a true vampire."

Was it a dream? Sebastian, who had been loyally tapping the side of her face whenever her eyes slid shut, met her newly focused eyes and gave her a smile. "She's back," he said, and again the medics crowded around her. Without attempting to ask anything, Arra locked a hand around this young medic's neck and hauled herself into a sitting position. The medics all fussed and took her arms, which were throbbing now, dragging her shakily to her feet. She tried to keep her balance valiantly and leant on one of the medics holding her, sliding her head forwards to whisper to him. "Did I pass the Trial?" she asked softly, not wanting anyone else to hear. At that, the vampire, whoever he was, let out a huge burst of laughter. "She's still a bit out of it," he chuckled to someone else, and then made a sympathetic noise when she looked at him pleadingly, as though she desperately needed the question answered. "You've done it, Miss Sails," he said politely, "Can't you hear them cheering?"

Standing a little straighter, Arra remembered what cheering might have sounded like and registered that indeed, there was quite a bit of it going on around her. It took a significant amount of effort, but she craned her neck upwards to look around her, at the seemingly hundreds of vampires that had gathered to watch her live or die, and though they were merely blurred faces to her, there was an atmosphere of elation, though somehow all of these people knew and cared about her, when she was aware that there would be some of them that she had never met before. But they all roared around her, some coming closer briefly to tell her how excellently she had done or to clasp her hands briefly – not that she was able to pick out most of what they said to her in her confused haze. Forgetting for a moment about everything else, about the pain she was in, about how faint she felt, and about the people she most wanted to see – Arra took a moment to stand straight, clear her head and let all the feeling rush past as she finally analysed what exactly this felt like. For the first time in her life, everyone around her was looking upon her with respect – _the respect that you deserve, _Larten had told her; he'd promised her this when it was all over, but she had never quite believed it would be possible. As a human she'd never made it anywhere, always felt subjugated and objectified, and as a young vampire they had all laughed at her and her attempts to be as strong as them, like a child trying on her mother's shoes. But here, finally, was her coming of age. For the first time, Arra felt like a true vampire.

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><p>aww yay sappy ending. anyway. see you next update, really hope this chapter wasn't too much of a filler!<p> 


	10. Chapter 10

THIS IS STILL NOT THE LAST CHAPTER. I intended it to be, but the last chapter is proving impossibly difficult to write, so I thought I would split it in half and put this light bit of comic relief up first. Hope you enjoy :)

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><p>The feeling of elation washed through him instantly. However stoic he had remained throughout all of her tests, even when those around him had lost their composure, now that he could see her, at the end of her Trials for good, Larten let out a sharp cry of relief. He laughed, and slapped Gavner on the shoulder (a little too hard for the younger man, who tripped forwards and coughed), and launched into a rapturous round of applause. She was a little worse for wear, but as she stumbled out of the Trial even Arra had managed a smile.<p>

Larten had descended the steps at a speed even he hadn't known he was capable of, all concept of decorum abandoned as he flung his arms around her. Her little complaint of "oww, my neck!" went completely unnoticed in his struggle not to kiss her in front of the whole Hall – somehow he felt that wouldn't have pleased her – and instead he carefully, behind their backs so that nobody else would notice, entwined his fingers with hers. "I have never been more-" he began, unable to find the words over the raucous noise of the other vampires and the relief still flooding through him. "I am so – _I love you_," he finished.

It was so different to Mika's admission just because there was simply no possibility of her not returning it. It hadn't been the perfect time to say it, of course – with Larten it never would be the right time – and she wished she might have leaned up to kiss him, but instead she settled for squeezing his hand and whispering the words into his ear again before turning to face her other well-wishers, all bowing their heads respectfully, applauding, already celebrating.

When she enveloped Mika in a hug, she felt terribly for him. Now was certainly not the time to discuss any of their feelings, and not in front of all the gathered celebrating vampires, but she tightened her grip around his shoulders subconsciously, desperate to apologize for hurting him in a way he didn't even know about yet.

"I said you'd make it," he said, elated. He didn't even sound surprised by it; it was as though his belief in her had finally solidified and now she was faultless, infallible.

"Thank you," she said, the guilty knot in her stomach tightening. She knew she hadn't done anything wrong, but there was something so awful about the whole moment – she couldn't help but think that if he'd told her how he felt all those years ago when he claimed to have started falling for her, she probably wouldn't have given accepting his advances a second thought. But to write him off as a victim of his own timing or of cowardice was wrong, somehow – she knew why he had waited and she felt so terribly that he had invested so many years in waiting until she was ready, and in the end missing it by no more than three months. As he released her, she couldn't help but lay a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry," she said simply, and she truly was, maybe more than she ever had been.

Though she felt she had probably been clear enough, Mika did not react the way she had expected. As though he hadn't understood her meaning, he looked back at her sadly, and if she hadn't known better she would have sworn there was guilt in his eyes. "As am I," he said, before allowing Vanez to divert her attention from him with his congratulations and leaving his assistant thoroughly confused. Arrow brooded at the edge of the proceedings, standing conspiratorially with Mika behind the other vampires who celebrated her success, the two regarding each other with an odd lack of the usual happiness one exhibits when a friend, a colleague, an acquaintance or an assistant narrowly escapes death. Though Seba had clasped Arra's hands and was delivering a long-winded speech about how much the Trials had changed "since his nights as a cub" and had therefore diverted her attention away from the suspicious pair, Larten, who stood at her side, regarded them warily. He hadn't been sure what to expect from Arrow, but he had expected some display of emotion from Mika – however cold he was, Arra had seemed to bring out the heat in him on more than one occasion. But the raven-haired man stood at the side-lines of the celebrations looking for all the world like her victory had somehow represented a defeat.

"-and, between you and me," Larten overheard Seba whispering, leaning closer to Arra as he did so in order not to be overheard by the others around them. "I might be an old man now, but there is nothing wrong with my eyes. You and Larten make a wonderful pair."

Forgetting Mika, Larten choked on his own gasp and whirled on his former mentor, blushing to the roots of his red hair. "Seba!" he hissed, as the old vampire smirked back at him unapologetically. "Do not be so inappropriate! That is none of your –"

"Thank you Seba," Arra cut him off, with barely concealed amusement, nodding her head respectfully. "That's very kind of you to say."

Seba smiled back at her, raising an eyebrow at his former assistant. "You are welcome, Miss Sails," he said, then smiled his infuriating smile again. "You never know Larten," he said, looking innocently at the floor. "Perhaps having a mate might help calm that temper of yours." Though Larten balled his hands into fists and felt his blood practically boil in his veins at his mentor's teasing, he heard Arra let out a soft chuckle. "From the way I heard him speak of you in the stands yesterday," Seba continued, looking only at Arra though it was clear his mischievous grin was meant for his furious former assistant. "I would not be surprised if Larten asks you to take on that position sooner than you might expect."

"_Seba!_" Larten wailed, now far too embarrassed to be angry, but desperate for his torment to end as quickly as possible. Seba had always enjoyed teasing him, though these days he was rarely presented with the opportunity – Larten should have realised that being too obvious about his feelings for Arra would have brought out Seba's horrible pleasure in humiliating him. His embarrassed cry had attracted the attention of a few of the vampires around them, especially Kurda and Gavner, who levelled the blushing man with an unimpressed and awkward look. Arra was either too exhausted or too elated to feel at all embarrassed by Seba's comments, but decided for Larten's sake it might be time to make their escape. Besides that, Mika and Arrow were hovering around them like hawks, and she would have rather saved the argument they were certain to have over this for another night.

"I think I need to rest," she said to their small, disappointed audience, though she knew she would not be able to sleep. Arra simply had never been one for centre stage and the attention of the whole hall was a little daunting. Before Mika could overhear, she linked arms with Larten and, despite the pain in her legs, walked proudly, if a little unsteadily, out of the Hall like a champion.

"You probably need the medics," Larten mumbled as soon as they were outside. He was still bright red, even up into the roots of his hair, and he kept his gaze focused on their interlocked arms like a schoolboy as they walked.

Arra chuckled. Having escaped a death sentence, a niggling bit of leftover pain in her legs was hardly at the forefront of her mind. "I was just with the medics, remember?" she teased, ducking her head to try and capture his gaze. Though he flicked his eyes up to hers, they soon slid back again as he coughed to cover his embarrassment.

"At least to the medical cells, then," he decided.

"I don't think so," she replied, sliding in front of him and placing her hands on his arms. He was so stiff and ashamed after his old mentor's comments that it was very nearly enough to make her laugh out loud, had she not thought that only would have made it worse. As he mumbled something else about medical hammocks, she slid a hand around his jaw and brought him down into a kiss. Now that they were away from Mika, it no longer mattered to her at all whether the whole rest of the Mountain's population suspected something about them – nobody would have the guts to tell Mika before she could, anyway. As guilty as she felt, it didn't outweigh the light-headedness when Larten stepped her backwards until her back was against one of the tunnel walls. She marvelled in the back of her mind at his change in attitude – hands all over, he certainly wasn't the shy schoolboy he had been a moment ago.

"Stop it, you two!" a familiar voice yelled. Though Arra automatically panicked, if only a little, and rocketed backwards, expecting Larten to do the same, it seemed he had no such fears. He held onto her waist to prevent her escape and pressed a kiss to her temple as Seba strolled into view, either in a refusal to be ashamed or in the hope that Seba might leave them quicker if they stayed practically joined. "Remember, you are expected in the Hall of Princes in an hour," the old vampire told her awkwardly over Larten's shoulder. "It would probably do not to get _too_ distracted until afterwards. Besides, you probably actually do need to rest Miss Sails, even if that was just a lie you fed to the rest of us. And Larten," Seba tutted, an evil grin on his face. "I see you're no more of a gentleman now than you were as a youngster."

"_Go away!_" Larten roared, unable to keep his temper and spinning around to face his mentor. By then though Seba was already strolling away, laughing quietly to himself at the reactions he was capable of causing in the young man. Arra laughed too, and pulled him back in for another kiss, and though he sunk into it once, this time he seemed to think better of his actions.

"Seba is right," he said, straightening the shirt she had tugged out of place. "We are not teenagers."

Hair askew, Arra's mouth quirked and she raised an eyebrow.

"Stop it!" Larten half-begged, grabbing her wrist to pull her back into the walkway. "You need to rest, even if you do not feel like it."

Arra shrugged. "I certainly don't feel like it," she said teasingly, catching his eyes for a second. He did not blush again; it seemed she didn't have the power to embarrass him like Seba did. Instead, he tucked her hair back behind her ear and took her hand, only to press a kiss into her palm.

"Later," he promised, with a kind of twinkle in his eyes and a dirty smirk she'd never seen on him before.

She pulled her hand back. "Not if you're going to be that smarmy," she threatened, eyeing him up as if she was genuinely disgusted at his behaviour. Instantly he flushed red from head to toe, and there was no sign of a smirk on him at all; he looked purely horrified. "Arra," he began, his voice several octaves higher than it had been a moment ago, as he reached out to respectfully touch her shoulder. "Arra, I'm sorry, I didn't –"

Before she could stop herself she laughed raucously and started walking herself back toward her cell, alone. She was no delicate flower, and probably nothing he could have said or done would have been too vulgar or too suggestive, but there was no fun in letting him know that yet.

"I'll see you later," she said innocently, flashing him a smile and a wink as she disappeared around the corner. Her last sight of him was a man who wasn't sure whether he was guilty, aroused, amused or delighted, standing with one hand braced against the wall and looking more exhausted than she felt.

Perhaps she would be more of a Trial than the Trials themselves, he thought, as he watched her disappear.


	11. Chapter 11

This is finally finished. I really hope all of you, especially those who have been reading since the beginning, enjoy this chapter. I wish I could drag this fic out longer really as it's been great to write. Hopefully I will be back again soon with something new. Thanks for sticking with this even though it's taken so long to complete! ~ bry

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><p>Unable to get even a moment's rest, Arra was wasting the last few minutes before heading to the Hall of Princes by tracing the lines in the tiled floor of her cell. It hadn't sunk in yet that she had actually passed the Trials, and she sat and considered her success with no emotion at all. Did this mean that from now on, she was on the same level as everyone else? The majority of Vampires never chose to become Generals or hold any position of authority within the clan, and so the Trials were the only defining test of their character and skill that they ever needed to undertake. She commanded just as much respect now as any other fully-fledged member of the clan, except for those who had decided to prove themselves further. Already, she knew it wouldn't end here. Travelling with Mika on General duties had been some of the worst days of her life, but also some of the best, and she deeply admired the work he did and, in many ways, hoped to be as much like him as possible as she progressed.<p>

Thinking of Mika gave her an unpleasant pang of worry and guilt in the pit of her stomach. She tried to remember exactly what she'd said to him immediately after the Trial, but in the excitement her memory was a little fuzzy – a part of her hoped that somehow she had managed to get across her point to him right then and there, but the rest of her knew that it was only right and reasonable to expect to have a conservation with him about it. The Trials had been such a whirlwind that she had only just had the time to really sit and think about the meaning of his admission, and the questions that arose because of it.

Certainly, she _loved_ Mika. He had guided her through everything in the years since she'd met him, taken a chance on her when few others would have, and provided her with every possible opportunity she could have asked for. Though he hadn't gone soft on her, he had never been brutal or unkind – and she had learned to pick out fragments of affection from his stern front. She loved Mika because she respected him, trusted him, and cared deeply for him – but it was nothing like he thought. In their years of travelling together, she had often thought they made the perfect team; she had thought the two of them so similar back then, but now when she reflected on that it almost made her feel foolish. Her completion of the Trials, her assertion of independence in undertaking them, and spending time with others at the Mountain had been somewhat of a self-actualization process. She was not as stern as Mika, and she doubted she would ever become that way now, even as she matured – and she knew that she didn't have Mika's intelligence or cunning. It had taken a little distance from him to realize that there was probably none of the "kindred spirits" connection between them that she had always imagined after all.

"Are you ready?"

The voice shocked her, and when she looked up the gnawing guilt came back to her in a jolt. Mika looked different to her suddenly; she supposed she had never had any need to pity him quite like this before, and it dented her solid admiration of him. He held out a hand to help her to her feet, and she noticed that he had changed into finer robes for the celebration of her achievements. She had changed too, of course – but only out of necessity, into something no more elegant than her usual training gear. There was something a little pitiful about that, too – he looked so proud of her; ready to parade her around to the others in his best robes.

"Am I late?" she asked, wondering if she had lost track of time and the Princes had sent for her. She allowed him to help her up and then turned away to locate something warm to wear over her shoulders; it wasn't necessary, but it was an excuse not to look at him. She didn't have many items of clothing, and she deliberately took her time in sifting through them over and over again as though making a decision.

"No," he answered. "But I wanted to see you beforehand."

Before she could respond to that, or tell herself to stop being such a coward and get it all over with, he leant in over her shoulder and fished out a long grey cardigan on her behalf. "You've always looked nice in that," he commented, and though she was sure it hadn't been meant to cause such a reaction, the change in the way he spoke to her made her shiver. She took it from him and he casually took a seat on the lid of her coffin while she slipped it over her loose-fitting black shirt. "Do you remember when we had to buy you that?" he asked, nodding at the shirt.

They had been hiding from humans who had figured out their identities after a mistake made by Arra as she fed – she was only just a full-vampire, and she hadn't yet learned to listen as carefully as Mika might have to her surroundings. As a result, she had been confronted by a group of screaming and fainting women who had caught her seemingly draining the butcher dry, blood smudged around her lips. She had escaped them, of course, but a frantic scramble from town to town ensued to escape people who had heard of the two of them. In an effort to blend in a little more effectively, Mika and Arra had discarded their previous garments – in his case, a black suit with a flowing cape that, even to the untrained eye, would have made him look like a Creature of the Undead, and in her case a set of less threatening but equally bizarre pieces that made her look quite unlike any other woman on the street – including a pair of tight black breeches that never were immensely helpful for travelling, and that she currently wore, a long black coat and a pair of high leather boots. They had packed everything they owned away in a suitcase, dressed in plainer more appropriate clothing and boarded a ship heading abroad.

As she thought back on it, she realized they must have looked quite a fearsome pair, all garbed in black. She smiled briefly to show him that she remembered, but then suddenly wanted to reconsider her clothing. Everything on her was Mika all over – the shirt he'd purchased for her, a cardigan that might have originally been his it was so oversized, the breeches he had always encouraged her to wear. She had never realized before exactly how much of her was really _him_.

Though she hadn't been paying attention, he was already speaking.

"I am very proud of you, you know," he said, smiling up at her as she took several unnecessary minutes choosing a pair of shoes from the two sets she owned. "I knew you had promise all those years ago – but I don't think any of the greats have ever done it better."

"Enough flattery," she said, careful to sound like she was simply embarrassed. Really, the flattery was truly making her skin crawl – he had changed his entire attitude towards her since the last time they had spoken, and it made her distinctly uncomfortable. He no longer spoke to her like he always had, like an assistant and like a friend. There was something different in his voice, as though he already felt that his admission had changed everything between them. Perhaps, irreversibly, it already had.

"I have noticed that you are not as happy here as you were when we travelled," he said, and she thought she noticed a hint of desperation in his voice, as though he already knew that she could never feel the way he did about her. "I would not have liked to be caged in here either, in your position. To that end, I spoke to the Princes on behalf of both of us yesterday. My investiture is not a process that need be rushed; I have realized that maybe I am not ready yet to commit most of the rest of my life to the Mountain. I was considering leaving, for a few years. Long enough to see the world again on our own time, without any of the constraints that will come with being a Prince." He looked up at her for approval and she simply met his gaze, unable to find the words to explain to him everything that was wrong with the situation. "I thought it could be just you and I again, as it always has been."

Before she could stop herself, the overwhelming desire to put him out of his misery was at the forefront of her mind. "I can't," she said, watching him closely for a reaction.

He raised an eyebrow, but smiled at her anyway. "Have you started to like it here?"

"You are welcome to travel if that's what you want," she said softly, wondering if there was a kindest way to break him. "I just don't think the time is right for me to be going with you."

She was certain he understood from the look in his eyes, but he smiled anyway. "It was always going to be your decision in the end," he shrugged. "It doesn't matter to me if you would prefer to stay here."

In the same way as Mika had been protective of her, she had always felt similarly a little protective of him, though not to the same extent. Had anyone ever shown him any disrespect or aimed to hurt him, she had always defended him. It felt wrong, deep down, to know that this time it would be her that caused him the pain. "I intend to leave the Mountain in a couple of months, perhaps maybe even sooner," she said carefully. "But I am not your assistant anymore, Mika. You needn't accompany me."

He held up his palms as a gesture of surrender. "It wasn't meant as an insult!" he said quickly. "Of course you are capable of being on your own these days; it isn't that. Regardless of the fact that you are no longer my assistant, I…" he stopped briefly and seemed to struggle to find the correct way to explain it to her. It was decidedly painful watching him. "I feel we have other reasons to stay together now, though, at least for another fifteen or twenty more years…"

The idea of twenty more years was suddenly unbearable.

"I discussed something else with the Princes, too," he said, standing up in order to take her hands. The guilty feeling was back in her stomach now worse than ever, and she found she could barely look at him, so she kept her gaze focused on his hands as they enveloped hers. "We are not mentor and assistant anymore, Arra – you were right about that. But there is nothing that would make me happier than if you _would_ agree to stay with me another few years – however many you would like – as my mate, instead."

Had she been made of weaker stuff, she might have cried. It was all wrong, and she knew she only had a couple of seconds to look at him or answer him or _something _before her silence would cruelly do the job for her. She forced her eyes up to meet his and in a moment he was closer than she thought, and one hand was around the side of her neck, but as soon as he bent down to kiss her it was all too much.

"No," she said simply, and instantly regretted it. It had all been happening too quickly, and she couldn't possibly have kissed _Mika_, he was everything but family to her. It had been the only way to get out of the situation and stop it dead, but as she looked at him she could see him beginning to crumble. Before he could say anything, she took one of his hands again. "I'm sorry, Mika," she said, watching him as he began to struggle to meet her eyes. "I'm sorry I haven't said it sooner and I'm sorry if I've humiliated you; I haven't done any of this to hurt you. But I can't," she said, barely more than a whisper. "I _do_ love you, Mika," she murmured, eyes closed. "But it's nothing like that."

There was a second of weakness where he stared down at the floor and his brow knotted, but then in another second he was back again, as hard and impenetrable as ever. He pulled his hand out of hers and unnecessarily smoothed his robe.

"Is there a reason?" he asked, in a voice that was nothing like the one he'd been using before. Everything else rushed back to her suddenly. She decided in an instant that she couldn't possibly mention Larten.

"No," she said instantly, without thinking. Of course, it was too quick.

Mika looked back at her, distinctly not fooled. "It doesn't matter what it is," he said kindly. "I'd just prefer to be told." When she said absolutely nothing to that, racing through the kindest way to tell him that he would never be anything more than a mentor and a friend to her, and racing to find ways not to mention the fact that she was in love with _someone else_, he nodded to himself.

"It's Larten, isn't it?" he asked softly. He didn't sound angry with her in the slightest, but when she looked back at him there was hurt and betrayal written all over his face that were much worse.

"I know you won't believe me," she said. "But I'd have made the same decision even if I'd never met him."

It was nothing more than a white lie. In truth, she wasn't sure how it might have gone had she never known Larten, and she suspected that Mika knew that too. She thought back to herself a year ago, and realized that it was more than likely that if Mika had made this admission then she might not have exactly welcomed it or celebrated it, but she probably would have convinced herself that it was the sensible path to take. Before Larten, she might have been able to convince herself she loved Mika.

He shrugged. "It's your decision," he said, in an attempt to sound like he had already accepted her rejection. In the uncomfortable silence that followed, he turned the words over and over in his head, and then before he could do anything to stop it, suddenly they had already slipped out.

"I think I loved you the moment I set eyes on you," he said quietly. "And that was thirty years ago now. Has he loved you even thirty minutes yet?"

There was no easy way to explain to him that it could never matter to her whether Larten would love her as much as he did; there was nothing she could do to explain that she would have sooner been on her own than with Mika _in that way _for any number of years.

"I'm sorry," she said hopelessly. "If I'd known you felt this way sooner, I'd never have become involved with someone else so quickly. I have not done this to hurt you." She looked at him as he paced in front of her, looking for all the world like that was the last thing he could believe. "You do know that?"

He didn't answer, but that wasn't a surprise. Since the start of her attempting to assert her independence – indeed, since the first time she had ever deliberately gone against his wishes – he had clearly believed that she was rebelling and wished to cause him pain.

"Involved?" he repeated, and shook his head as though the thought was simply incomprehensible. "You must know by now that nobody will ever understand you the way I do." Mika was aware that he sounded petulant and he hated it, but the words were coming out faster than he would have liked and there was nothing he could do to stop himself from sounding childish. "He'll never know you like I do," he said bluntly. "Because you will never allow him to know you as well as I do. You have never trusted someone the way you do me."

The worst thing was that he was right. Arra wasn't sure there ever would be anyone else in the world that would be as close to her as Mika was, and she realized in that moment how desperately she feared losing him entirely. "Just accept it," she said softly, hoping he might go back to the way he was before. More than anything she hoped that there was something she could say that would take it all back to the beginning and erase all of this, but she simply couldn't think of anything that would manage it.

He shook his head again, and it pained her to see him lose his composure when he treasured it so much.

"You know he doesn't love you the way I do."

There was nothing she could say to that. Watching his reactions, she realized that perhaps there had been more to Mika's feelings for her than even she could have imagined. _I loved you the moment I set eyes on you_. She replayed those words over and over and wondered whether he would ever be able to forgive her. "No," she admitted. "He probably doesn't."

Mika was scrambling for words to make her understand the gravity of the mistake he felt she was making.

"I've given you everything," he said, almost as an accusation. "You are _everything_ to me. Can't you understand?"

Arra felt like taking a step away from him at his change in tone. He no longer sounded like he warranted pity; he was angry now, betrayed and jealous.

"I do," she said, tempted to reach out and touch him. "You mean the world to me, Mika. I've told you before; I will never forget what you've done for me. I will always be there if you need me."

He made a derogatory noise. "But none of that means anything," he growled. "Because you've picked up with a wastrel who knows nothing about you, could never care about you the way I do and likely only wants you for one thing?"

She had never liked Mika when he was angry, and jealousy did not suit him. "I feel guilty," she said, containing her temper when a large part of her wanted to scream that she had done nothing wrong. "But it doesn't change anything. You can't make me feel guilty enough to fall in love with you, Mika," she said, and slipped around him to head for the door. "It just won't work."

He caught her hand before she could leave. "I've seen it all along, the way you think you feel about him," he told her. "I hoped you might realize at some point how _wrong_ you are to dismiss us. He's _nothing _to you Arra, and you mean nothing to him, not like you do to me – I _love _you, doesn't that mean anything? Don't you care?"

"Sorry," she said again, one last time, before sliding out of his grasp and heading off down into the tunnels at speed, hoping that he would realize that catching up to her was useless. He called after her once, and though she was sure he hadn't meant it to, his voice broke on the second syllable; he sounded like a broken man, and it made her heart ache to think she'd been the cause. Blinking away the tears in her eyes, she headed to the Hall of Princes in the most obscure way possible, hoping to avoid any well-wishers on her way there.

* * *

><p>The official part of the celebration, in which the Princes congratulated her on the completion of the Trials, was over fairly quickly and had absolutely no attendees except for Arra herself – though she did notice Vanez, Larten and Gavner loitering mysteriously outside as if unable to wait even a moment longer for the true celebrations to begin. She was not nearly cheerful enough for the company of the other three vampires on her walk to the Hall of Kheldon Lurt, where the vampires who had supported her all along would gather to raise a glass of blood to her success.<p>

"Sorry to be rude," Gavner said halfway through their journey, addressing Arra. Larten immediately shot him a glare, terrified that he might say something incredibly inappropriate, but Gavner had known him too long to take that seriously. "But you don't look like you've just passed the Trials. You look like you've got the Hall of Death to look forward to. Seriously."

Vanez laughed and clapped her on the back so hard she almost stumbled forwards. The cheerful General clearly had no idea of his own strength. "Shut up, Gavner," he said to the younger man, though it was light-hearted. "I'll be impressed if you have any energy left to jump for joy after you finish your last Trial! Poor Arra's just tired."

Gavner looked a bit bashful and didn't say anything else about it, and he and Vanez continued their chatter for the remainder of their walk, seemingly excited in equal parts about her survival and about the opportunity to drink as much ale as possible in the next short period of time. Larten was not so easily fooled, and allowed the two of them to overtake so that he could have a quiet word with Arra undetected.

"What is wrong?" he asked under his breath, aware that she had been quite obviously fine when she'd left him dazed in the tunnels earlier. She would have said it was nothing, but she supposed there was no point in wasting time when Gavner and Vanez would surely start pestering them again any second.

"Mika," she said, and Larten's face clouded over. She shook her head at whatever assumption he had made. "I turned him down," she clarified, very quietly.

Larten looked distinctly unconcerned by that and couldn't help but shrug his shoulders slightly, which made her roll her eyes. She pulled him aside and they stopped, hoping the two merry vampires in front wouldn't notice.

"He asked me to go away travelling with him for 'fifteen or twenty years'," she explained. "And asked if I'd be his mate – for 'as long as I wanted', apparently."

Larten was looking like this was the last thing he wanted to hear. "And you turned him down," he prompted, wanting to hear that from her again just in case he'd imagined it. He was trying not to enjoy the thought of vicious Mika jilted by Arra who was actually in love with _him_, but it was surprisingly difficult.

"Well, obviously," she said impatiently, clearly not in the mood to recount the entire story. "But I've known Mika a long time, almost my whole life. I never thought I'd see him react like that to anything – he's never been emotional."

Before Larten could tell her either that he cared very little about Mika's supposed emotions (or that he couldn't really believe in their existence without some kind of proof), Gavner skidded to a halt in front of them.

"Can you hurry up?" he asked, like a child, undeterred even when both of them shot him a glare. "I _know_ you two can't wait to get your hands on each other right, but it's just not appropriate in corridors and the like, alright? So if you wouldn't mind –"

Clearly not particularly affected by her news about Mika, a bright red Larten had chased a screaming Gavner down the hallway before he could even complete his sentence. Arra no longer even felt that she had the motivation to be embarrassed – instead, she strolled ahead to catch up with Vanez, and before she could say anything to him, came face to face outside the doors with Arrow.

For once, he gave her a smile – and for a second, she was fooled into believing he might have been happy about the result of her Trials.

"Have you seen Mika?" he asked, in his typical tactless way, and she almost groaned aloud at the thought that Arrow had known he was planning to ask her all of that and now expected the two of them to mate and run off into the sunset.

Struggling over whether to say yes or no, she blurted a hurried "yes, earlier," and then shifted out of his way to continue walking, leaving her three companions thoroughly confused and a little worried that Arrow might break her arms for being so rude to him in public. Instead, the bald-headed man simply watched her walk, knowing full well what her silence had meant.

* * *

><p>Arrow found Mika, predictably, in the same spot his former assistant must have left him in. By the time he arrived, after searching the Games Halls to make sure he wasn't ripping anyone to shreds, Mika looked like it had been a while since he'd moved. He was sat on the lid of her coffin with his hands folded together, looking for all the world like a man who was desperately wondering how to regain his lost pride.<p>

"I saw Arra," Arrow said immediately, seeing no reason to beat around the bush. A tiny amount of him believed and hoped that really, it had all gone swimmingly and Mika had finally got what he wanted. Another, much larger part of him knew it hadn't gone that – and, however awful it sounded, was also relieved. Though Mika wouldn't be able to see it yet, his obsession with Arra had done nothing that he could see apart from make him a laughing stock after an embarrassing fight with Aksel Vonn and give him an awful reputation as a bad-tempered, unreasonable man. It would be better for him, for his relationships with other vampires and for his career, that his focus on her ended for good.

"Not now," Mika growled.

Arrow, as always, ignored him. He clicked his tongue awkwardly and took a seat next to the man he thought of as his brother on the coffin lid. "How did it go?" he asked unnecessarily, and was rewarded with a glare of epic proportions for the question, though Mika did not answer.

"Does that mean it went alright, or does that mean it went badly?" Arrow asked, genuinely unsure. Wondering if a bit of comic relief might be appropriate, he peered around the edges of the lid as a joke. "She's not in the coffin, is she?" he asked, and gave a little chuckle afterwards. Immediately, Mika stood to leave.

"Alright!" Arrow said quickly, standing up to block his exit. "I'm sorry."

The two sat together quietly for a few moments after that, Mika lost in his own thoughts and Arrow unsure of what was safe to say and what wasn't. Eventually, he sighed.

"I know it's never exactly been your strong point," he said at length. "But honestly, I think you should look on the bright side. Even if she hasn't been delighted with the proposal this time, she might come round later. You know how clueless she was; it might have taken her by surprise."

Mika shook his head.

"She thinks she's in love, I think," he said vaguely.

Arrow narrowed his eyes. "With you?" he offered hopefully, and received a punch in the leg that was so hard he thought Mika might have broken one of his bones. Trying to stop himself from crying out in pain, Arrow watched Mika wrestle with himself. The worrying part of it all was that Mika looked like he was in more pain despite the lack of an injury.

"With Seba's assistant," he said, as if he was unable to bring himself to say the name. "You know, the one I hate."

"He is much uglier than you are," Arrow said, in what he hoped was a tone of kindness. Unable to take the insincerity and utter uselessness of his friend's comments and longer, Mika considered trying to explain to him how heart-breaking this had been, how _much _he loved her and how much it felt like being stabbed in the heart to hear that she had any preference for someone else, finally did head towards the door.

"Where are you going?" Arrow asked before he rounded the corner.

Mika looked back, a grim smile on his face. "You won't understand it," he said bitterly. "But I'm going to raise a glass of blood for her success, like everyone else will be tonight."

Mika knew that Arrow would be looking at him like he was from another universe as he disappeared. It didn't seem to matter, though, how much pain she was causing him – he could not bring himself to think even for a moment that he hated her or that he was not proud of her and was not delighted at her success. All of the resentment he could have directed at her, he supposed, if he hadn't loved her so very much, was directed at the man who had snatched her away from him. Deep down, he knew all too well that one day Larten Crepsley would break her heart in a way that he would never be able to, knowing her the way he did, but even that provided no comfort – she was more precious to him than anything, and the thought of her heartbroken over such an awful, useless man as Crepsley somehow made him even more distraught.

He was too deep in love with her, as he reached the Hall, to begin to blame her for anything but not yet being able to see their relationship for what it truly was. He couldn't bear to look at her as he entered, and the hordes of other vampires who probably hadn't even cared whether she lived or died but had turned up to drink to her success anyway, were probably useful in obscuring her view of him.

Locating a mug of blood, he held it up to nothing in particular and remembered everything, like a flashback – every single moment spent with her, every single time he'd thought _I love you _and never said a word, every single touch and every glance.

"Cheers, Arra," he said quietly, bitterly, and took a sip.

* * *

><p>Though Larten had noticed the dark General slipping into the Hall, Arra had been distracted by Kurda Smahlt, who seemed to be managing for once to compliment her without slipping in an accidental insult. He observed him for a while, losing him several times behind other vampires, and then noticed him sink down onto a bench and rub his eyes wearily.<p>

When Arra had told him about her exchange with Mika, Larten was not particularly ashamed to say that he had not cared. However much he respected Mika, it didn't matter to him that he had lost out – he had manipulated her, blatantly intentionally, and would have continued to for years to come had they never come to the Mountain. The further she had grown away from her mentor the more she had managed to become her own person – and Larten could not and would not allow himself to feel any pity for the man who had controlled her so much that she had known almost nothing of who she really was. His lack of belief in her, too – his own assistant, who faced so much prejudice from the other members of the clan – had somewhat disgusted him. But even looking at the soon-to-be Prince with all those issues at the forefront of his mind, he realized that he had never seen him look so hopeless, even drunk out of his mind in the boxing ring with Vonn. This was different somehow, as though now it was not just speculation that led him to believe that she wouldn't return his affection, it had all finally become real; the years he'd wasted, the amount of love that would come to nothing.

It was difficult not to pity him. Perhaps unwisely, Larten checked that Arra was occupied with a group of drunken older vampires who were reminiscing about the "last time a woman passed these tests", and then slipped undetected across the room and took the seat across from her former mentor.

Mika had finished his mug of blood, and was onto something stronger. He couldn't help but sneer. "She's told you, I suppose?" he asked, and Larten, aiming to be as honest as possible, simply nodded. Mika laughed humourlessly. "Come to gloat then, have you?"

Hoping their discussion might not escalate into aggression at this, the worst of all possible times, Larten aimed for diplomacy. "No," he said, sincerely. "I am sorry for everything that has happened."

Mika shook his head and continued with his drink, as though he intended to try and pretend that Larten simply wasn't sat in front of him.

"I do love her," he said, though he wasn't sure whether that was the right or the wrong way to take the discussion.

Mika snarled back at him. "You don't know whether you do or not," he accused, voice raised enough that a few of the vampires around them turned to observe the oncoming storm. Knocking back the remainder of his drink, Mika pointed a finger at the red-haired man. "You wanted this from the start," he said, and there was a croak in his voice that betrayed his sadness, even if he covered it well with fury. "She was mine all along and you _knew _it."

Sensing that Mika was not in the mood to discuss it, Larten made his apologies and stood to leave immediately rather than cause a scene that would humiliate all three of them. It wasn't the time to try and be the bigger man and smooth over their feud – perhaps it would be a while until then. As he climbed to his feet and swung one leg over the bench, Mika moved in an instant – so quickly that those around him didn't notice it until after the event – and launched his fist into the younger man's temple, knocking him straight off balance and sending him crashing to the floor.

Though he felt like he might have been bleeding from one of his eyes from the sheer force of the hit, Larten stood immediately as a crowd began to gather. He appreciated that, whatever his intentions, it had been his fault in coming over in the first place. Before anyone could make a scene out of it, especially a bald-headed approaching shape that he identified as Arrow, he mock-laughed and clapped his hands together a couple of times. "Good game!" he said, and at that, most of the crowd turned their backs. "You caught me out, Mika!"

Hoping he had satisfied most of the suspicious onlookers, he strode away to look for somewhere to check the state of his injury – his head was pounding in a way he hadn't remembered it even could, and his vision was completely blurred. Unfortunately, before he could make it outside, a hand on his chest brought him to a halt.

"What has happened to you?" Arra asked incredulously – hardly reassuring him that the injury was not noticeable. She reached a hand up to gently touch the side of his head and he tried his best to be as manly as possible and not flinch when she touched the already reddening bruise.

"…I got punched," he said, mind racing through the blurry haze of the injury for something reasonable to tell her that wouldn't spark even more tension between the three of them. As much as he disliked Mika – more so now that he'd taken his loss like such a child – it didn't seem right to kick a man when he was down, so to speak.

"Who by?" Arra asked, looking around as if trying to locate a brawl. The Hall was packed now, full of rowdy vampires, and so luckily she could not locate Mika in the flurry.

"Some drunken idiot," Larten lied, convincing himself that lying to her wasn't as bad if technically, Mika _was_ a drunken idiot and also it was, unquestionably, for her own good. Before he could go any further, she guided him to a bench and took off her cardigan, ripping one of the sleeves to use to dab at his injuries – there was a cut in the other side of his head, he realized thankfully, that he must have picked up during his fall – far preferable to unexplained bleeding from the eyes.

"That's a shame," he commented, as his vision started to clear and his blinding headache started to dissipate. He nodded at the cardigan she'd discarded. "You looked nice in that."

Rather than describe to him the endless irony behind that statement, Arra simply smiled and shrugged. "It's alright," she said. "I never liked it much anyway."

She tilted his head to each side to examine the damage as she crouched in front of him. "You were just being a baby," she jokingly taunted – though, Larten considered, she more than likely did mean it after all the injuries she'd sustained in the past few days. "You've got a scratch and a black eye." She grinned at him playfully. "Were you just trying to get my attention?"

Though she had gotten the situation all wrong, he couldn't help but laugh at her cheeky smile. Though his head still spun and pounded, he knew they were crowds of thirty or forty strong away from Mika's vision, and couldn't resist a kiss – or two, or three. Sooner than he would have liked, though, she broke the kiss and joined him on the bench. It was either the head injury or the merry atmosphere that made Larten decide to grasp her hand.

"You said to me that Mika asked you if you wished to travel," he began carefully, deciding it might be best to pick his words carefully so as not to offend her. This time, however, he had been too slow – as the second the words were out of his mouth, she was grinning.

"Mhmm?" she asked, still smiling from ear to ear. Larten wondered briefly if he had always been so predictable, or whether she had an exceptional ability to read him.

As he attempted to continue, he could feel his standard blush creeping into his cheeks, and he could feel himself begin to lose the thread of exactly what he had wanted to say to her. "I was just wondering," he said, suddenly nervous. Was she laughing because she thought he was ridiculous, or was she laughing because she was happy? "I do not know what your plans are for the next year or so. It is none of my business what you wish to do with your time, but I would quite like it if…well, I would quite like it if you would allow it to be my business, so to speak. Ah…"

As he completely lost his thread and his nerve, Arra began to laugh raucously, so much that she had to wipe a tear from the corner of one eye.

She shook her head as if she simply could not believe any one man could be so useless at asking a simple question, and then kissed him gently again, careful not to aggravate his headache (though she was sure he probably wouldn't have complained). "Where do you want to go?" she asked simply, and he laughed gratefully for her saving him the embarrassment of having to ask her. He could already tell that for the first few months, she would be doing a lot of this.

"Anywhere," he answered honestly, reaching for her hand. "I do not mind, as long as you will come with me."

It was an incredibly clichéd way to ask her, but it was so classically _him_ that Arra couldn't help but be charmed by his attempt. "I love you," she said softly, cupping his chin, and pressing her lips to his again.

They were interrupted long before they were ready by Paris Skyle, who gave them the look only a wise old man who had seen the beginning of love too many times before could. They sprung apart as soon as they noticed him, but the ageing Prince gave them a smile to show that he hadn't considered them impolite.

"I am sorry to interrupt," he said, but unlike Seba or Gavner, it was not laced with sarcasm – he was genuinely sincere, as he always was. "I was simply hoping to offer my congratulations to you again, Arra Sails."

He sat down on her other side – another vampire had been there a second previously, but had seemingly run a mile in his desperation for the most well-respected man in the entire clan not to see him downing his weight in rum. "I am sure you have heard this many times tonight," he said. "But I was deeply impressed with your performance. I have only one question left to ask you," he said ominously, then held up a hand. "Before I do, though, I would like to make it clear that I do not mean to offend you."

Larten was looking like the world was collapsing around him at the thought of Paris Skyle of all people criticizing her for her mistakes in one of her Trials – was he going to tell her what a monumental mistake she had made in her fourth Trial, or was it something else? Though he could of course never argue with the Prince, he made a silent promise to the Vampire Gods to serve the clan to the best of his ability as long as he lived if Paris Skyle would _just please please _not do anything, at this stage, to shake her newly founded confidence.

Arra, however, looked intrigued. "Of course," she said, motioning for him to ask whatever he liked of her.

"Do you intend to take the Trials again, in a few years?"

The question hung in the air uncomfortably.

"To be honest with you, Sire," Arra said slowly. "I hadn't actually considered it."

Larten, who was a little more familiar with Paris from his time with Seba, was a little less guarded. "Sire," he began, puzzled. "It is hardly an expectation that a vampire might take the Trials more than once in a lifetime these days, unless they wish to become a Prince – or at least that is the impression I have been under."

Paris nodded. "The only reason I ask you this," he said, continuing to focus his gaze on Arra. "Is because, as I have already told you, I was deeply impressed by your performance. You have not been training long, and you have taken your fair share of risks – but so is the nature of bring a true vampire, and I respect you for that. To that end, I was intrigued to know if you were considering becoming a General one night in the future, and therefore attempting the tests again."

Arra seemed to be at a loss for what to say. Larten, sensing her confusion, responded on her behalf though he felt that Paris was at least somewhat tired of his interruptions.

"I was not aware that one needed to take the tests multiple times in order to become a General, Sire?" he said carefully, not wishing to either make himself look foolish or infuriate the old Prince. Paris, though, was known for his patient, and simply smiled.

"I should have explained," he nodded. "My apologies to you both. As you know, the Trials must be completed with all of the stones as part of the draw in order to contribute towards becoming a General. It is an antiquated system, I know, and one that is not entirely fair on candidates like yourself – but I am afraid those are the rules."

Larten had put all of the pieces together quicker than Arra had, but a part of him hoped she would simply smile and say that she'd think about it later. Deep down, he knew that was beyond unlikely, but he could see the whole scene unfolding in front of him and the idea of it made him want to almost sob. As he looked up and prayed once again that Arra might just decide to let it go, he caught sight of the black-garbed, broad figure of Mika Ver Leth approaching.

Briefly, he wondered if the Vampire Gods hated him.

Arra was barely capable of saying anything at all for a moment, but finally managed to string something together, though she wasn't sure she wanted the answer.

"Are you saying," she began slowly and as calmly as possible. "That the set of Trials I just undertook were not entirely complete?"

Even Paris, who was usually unmovable, looked a little confused by this whole exchange. "As you know, Miss Sails," he said, though he was clearly starting to realize himself that there had been a deep misunderstanding. "Three stones were removed for your set of Trials. The second stone, The Duel, The Hall of Flames and the Trial of Ancient Combat."

This time, Larten did outwardly groan. Arra, however, was entirely silent. She thought through it and remembered endless discussions with Mika about the Trials she feared the most, the ones she thought, however hard she trained, that she might never pass – she had worried endlessly over one-to-one combat with another General, and though she thought she might have had a fraction of a chance of passing the other two, they hardly filled her with hope; she was terrified of the Hall of Flames, and Ancient Combat involved fighting another General with the added difficulty of using no weapons at all to dispatch your enemy – with her strength not a match for several of the male vampires she knew, including Larten and Mika, her only hope had been well placed body shots and fortunate broken bones in the enemy, the likelihood of which were slim.

"But I never asked for that," she said quietly, looking Paris square in the eye and searching for an answer. "I _never_ would have wanted favours."

Paris, like Larten, had placed it all together.

"There has been a misunderstanding between you and your mentor," he said, then saw that it was clearly his time to make himself scarce. He lay a hand on her shoulder as he stood. "It takes nothing away from you, Arra Sails," he said. "Congratulations, all the same."

There was a long silence between the two of them as he walked away, and Larten watched through the gaps in his fingers as Mika hovered nearby. Eventually, he brought himself to say something.

"It makes no difference," he reassured her softly, so that nobody else could hear – her embarrassment was radiating off her in waves, as though suddenly all of the vampires who had come to show their support for her and celebrate had all known that she was incapable of tackling some of the hardest Trials of all – they admired her, but still only as much as any of them could admire a _woman_.

"Yes it does," she said instantly, taking not even a second to consider it. She flicked her eyes up to meet his. "Did you know about it?" she asked, wondering if just about everything was being swept out from under her. All of Mika's talk of believing in her, everything he'd said about the greats not having done it better – it was all so fake she could hardly stand it.

"No," Larten answered, and looked back at her properly, meeting her eyes and holding her gaze in the way he knew she wanted him to. "I promise you," he said, and, knowing that he never could have lied to her about something she considered so important, she nodded.

Arra looked around at the vampires around her and wondered who knew and who didn't. Had it been something the Princes had kept to themselves? Had it been something in an announcement that she'd missed? Either way, everything about her success that she had previously felt so proud of felt like an awful joke – all of the work she had put it, all of the hours of training mercilessly in an effort to finally be considered an equal to everyone else had been utterly useless. Her Trials had been nothing but a sham all along, and it would have been dishonest, whatever the circumstances, to continue her celebrations when she knew she did not _truly_ deserve them.

She was so lost in her thoughts that she had not noticed Larten disappear. She scanned the crowd in front of her for him, and caught sight of the recognizable crop of red hair almost immediately – and at his side, the very last person in the world she had expected to see there to celebrate her so-called success. At first she wondered if Larten had purposefully sought him out and felt a little upset by the thought, after he had done so well to avoid Mika's confrontation throughout the past months of her Trials and their training. But the closer she looked, she could see Mika pushing forwards, towards her, and Larten attempting to guide him away.

That was enough for her. He had stood between them enough times.

She approached the two of them as quickly as she could, before either of them could throw a punch. Larten noticed her instantly and tried again to lead Mika away, but she quickly found her way through the crowds and grabbed her former mentor's arm.

"_I don't think any of the greats have ever done it better_," she mocked, more furious when she began speaking than she had realized she was before she started. Suddenly he was not a figure to be pitied anymore – he had schemed, lied and manipulated in order to get what he wanted; for her to follow his orders and live in his shadow, under his control, forever. And, finally, after everything, he had robbed her of the opportunity to really prove herself that she had been seeking since becoming his assistant thirty years ago. Any shred of the sorrow she had felt for hurting him was gone, and suddenly he was just a foolish, ridiculous man who had loved her too much – or, in her eyes, had not understood her well enough – and had selfishly ruined everything for her in the end. Now, she realized more than ever how wrong he had been when he said nobody would ever truly know her the way he did – if anything, if he could have thought even for a second that this pathetic victory would have been enough for her, he knew her the least of all.

He attempted to reach out and touch her, but Larten tried to pull him away again – and though she couldn't hear the exact words, she heard a reference to _do that again_ and watched Mika raise his fist. She could hardly contain a gasp.

"Did you do that?" she asked suddenly, breaking the two of them apart and gesturing toward Larten's head. Mika said nothing, but everything in his face and the way he stood betrayed him. She was too focused to be angry with Larten for lying to her, and she knew that if she gave it a moment's thought she would probably understand the reasoning behind it. "That _and _how you've humiliated me! You are on a roll!"

Mika's eyes showed that his thoughts were racing, building an excuse for the mistake he knew he had made, but for once in his life, he wasn't quick enough.

"I couldn't have allowed it," he said weakly. "You could have died in those Trials, Arra – you were too young to take them, and I knew you weren't ready. I've never been able to stand to see you hurt, and I couldn't have stood to see you _killed _because you were too stubborn to accept it when I told you that it wasn't your time yet."

She shook her head in total disbelief. "It wasn't about you," she hissed, aware that she was making a scene but unable to stop herself. "It was always about you, but this time, I was doing this for myself. I'd rather have died _honestly_ than have all of this now and know that I haven't achieved it fairly."

Mika had nothing to say. All those months ago, when she had insisted on undertaking the Trials without any of the proper years of preparation and had been determined to ignore everything he said on the matter, it had simply seemed like the right thing to do. In all their years together, it had gotten more and more impossible to allow her to take the kind of risks she wanted to in order to prove herself – and he had convinced himself that, if only the Princes were aware of the restrictions, she would never really need to know. As he thought back, he knew it was selfish – but still, even as she stood in front of him and stared at him like he was a stranger, he couldn't help but think it was all for her own good.

"I'm sorry," he offered, pointlessly, and she laughed.

"You're not," she accused. "You're too selfish to understand why it was wrong."

There was a silence between them, and suddenly Arra realized that the way she'd felt earlier – the desperation for things to go back to the way they were before, the hope that she wouldn't lose him forever – was no longer important to her. This, the final straw, had changed everything between them. She no longer cared if he loved her, or if she had injured his pride or his heart, or whether his intentions had been good. He was no longer the man she had admired, respected and _loved_, albeit in another way, for all those years.

"This is the end," she told him, without a hint of shame or sadness. "We will never travel together again like we used to, I will never be your assistant again, I will _never_ be your mate, and we will _never_ be the way we were."

The final stage in the dissolution of their fragile relationship finally complete, she pushed him aside and headed out, through the tunnels and out into the fresh air. It took several minutes, which had undoubtedly been spent struggling to get away from either Mika or Arrow and then escaping the crowds who would have preferred to see a fight, but Larten eventually joined her.

"I am sorry," he said, straightaway. "I thought it would be better for the two of you if I just said –"

"It doesn't matter about that," she said, wearily. She couldn't bring herself to care that Larten had told her a little white lie about Mika trying to knock him out – he was right, had the rest of the revelations not come to light, it might have been better for the two of them that she hadn't known. The significance of that, though, was so miniscule to her in comparison to the weight of the lies that had just been revealed.

They sat in silence for a while, but Larten weaved his hand into hers almost instantly as he sat down. In the time it took for the two of them to finally say anything, the total darkness was turning to the slightest sign of the approaching dawn – the sky was dark blue, and it would only be a couple more hours until the sunrise.

"Larten," Arra eventually said, after waiting long enough to ascertain whether she regretted what had happened between her and Mika – and deciding she didn't, even when her anger was gone. He turned towards her, though she kept her gaze on the clouds.

"I would like nothing more than to see the world with you," she said, and he smiled gently at her and squeezed her hand. She looked at him quizzically. "But I have to ask; how much of a rush are you in to get going?"

Larten frowned, confused. "As I said," he replied. "I do not mind where we go or when we leave, as long as you agree to accompany me."

She nodded, and then looked up at the sky again with a sudden look of headstrong determination that made his stomach turn with a sudden worry.

"Arra, you are not thinking –"

She smiled. "I'm afraid so, yes," she interrupted.

Knowing what it meant to her made it impossible to argue, but Larten knew it would be heart-breaking to watch her go through it all again. He placed a kiss on her forehead and sighed deeply like a tormented man.

"Can you at least give it a year?" he asked pleadingly. He had been looking forward so much to the end of her Trials and the beginning of their time together, uninterrupted for a little while by constant battles of life or death. But, he supposed, nothing was ever going to be that simple with Arra.

She shrugged. "I'll give it a couple of months," she said, and laughed when he groaned. "But only if you'll agree to train me again," she added, and then threateningly: "and if you won't, I swear I'll take them tomorrow."

Larten laughed – the situation was hardly humorous, but it was so typical of her to think it was possible to start all over again. No recovery, no time to rest; internally he swore to himself that this woman was truly insane, but oddly enough it didn't put him off the desire to lean in for a kiss. This time though, finally, she lay back on the grass and pulled him down above her.

"I suppose, in that case," he said in between kisses, as she shifted her legs around his. "All I have to say to you is may the luck of the Vampire Gods be with you in your _second _set of the Trials of Initiation."

* * *

><p>So that is really the end. Please do let me know what you thought of not only this chapter, but the story as a whole. I really hope to take on another long fic like this at some point, so I'd like some constructive criticism, thoughts, observations - anything - in order to help me improve. Again, I really hope this has been an enjoyable read! :)<p> 


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